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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27408109">honey love</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/mandaestella/pseuds/mandaestella'>mandaestella</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Actor RPF, Alexbelle, Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, The Hunger Games (Movies), The Hunger Games (Movies) RPF</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Chefs, Bon Appetit Test Kitchen AU, F/M, nano 2020, truly no one asked for this except for me</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 22:00:11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>56,874</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27408109</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/mandaestella/pseuds/mandaestella</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>above all, alex and isabelle love food and everything that comes with it: making it, talking about it, and of course, eating it. what they don’t realize is that they also love each other, and it might just be too late for them once they finally figure it out.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Isabelle Fuhrman/Alexander Ludwig</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. all the subliminal things no one knows about you</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>if you are here reading this, thank you! this is my nano project this year, and i haven't written alex and isabelle in quite a while so getting back into it has been both fun and a little bit stressful.</p><p>disclaimer: i came up with the idea for this fic quite a while ago, but i was saving it for nano. since then, some things have come to light in the food world, and i no longer support or recommend bon appetit magazine.</p><p>i am excited to keep writing this and i welcome any comments, questions, or suggestions! as always, giant thank you to my two best friends, emily and gracie, who answer every text message SOS no matter what time it is or how ridiculous my cries for help are.</p><p>all the love,<br/>-a</p>
    </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>i'm a sucker for all the subliminal things<br/>no one knows about you<br/>and you're making the typical me break my typical rules<br/>it's true, i'm a sucker for you<br/>/ sucker by  the jonas brothers</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>Alex and Isabelle Make Sourdough Bread | Wild Card</b>
</p><p>It feels like Alex is always waiting for Isabelle. The honest truth of the matter is that he doesn’t mind it, and she knows that. She runs fifteen minutes late to everything; it is just one of the million little inexorable facts that he knows about her, just how he knows that she uses the same eight inch chef’s knife that she’s had since she graduated from Harvard or that she keeps a bowl of Andes mints on her coffee table for visitors or that she drinks tea with honey every single morning or that she obsessively cleans when she is stressed or anxious (thankfully for Alex, since a couple of weekends ago he found himself on his hands and knees in her bathroom, regrouting the tile next to the shower). </p><p>She is late now, but it’s only five minutes past their nine o’clock call time, so Alex figures that he has at least another ten minutes before Isabelle comes flying through the door of the test kitchen, her coat already slung over her arm and honey tea in hand. Sometimes she makes her tea in the test kitchen, if she doesn’t have a video to film or a meeting to run into right away, but the one time Alex tried to do it for her, he apparently did it incorrectly, forgetting to use the clover honey that she has to specially order. But this morning, they have to get started right away, so he sure hopes that she remembered to bring it from home in the same travel mug that she has been using since her first day on the job. </p><p>The camera crew is finishing their set up, Jack’s camera already trained on him and their director Willow settled in her chair off to the side, backlit by the sun streaming in the floor to ceiling windows that line one entire wall of the test kitchen. Alex leans down, careful not to put an elbow into the empty glass bowl set up on top of the butcher block cutting board in front of him on the workstation, and pulls his phone out of his back pocket. Sure enough, he has a text from Isabelle that must have come in when he was getting his mic on, confirming that she is still five minutes out.</p><p>Alex drops his phone into the front pocket of his apron, trying not to fidget. He still gets nervous every time he steps in front of the camera, even though his show is the longest-running in the test kitchen and has racked up millions of views in the four years that it has been featured on the magazine’s Youtube channel. It is a whole different ball game knowing that that many people are going to be watching you. Thankfully, Isabelle knows all about that sort of pressure, because her show regularly pulls in ten million views, something that Alex loves to tease her about.</p><p>He especially needs her today. Isabelle is the test kitchen’s resident pastry chef, and today Alex is going to attempt to make bread, something that he has certainly never had success with before, although he has tried it many times. In fact, he tested out his bread baking skills last week with Isabelle coaching him, and it did not go well. Suffice it to say, he is extra nervous today.</p><p>All of that melts away when Isabelle breezes through the double doors into the test kitchen, tossing her coat in the general direction of the hooks by the door and hurrying over towards them, mug of tea in hand just like Alex knew it would be. “Hi, hi, hi,” she says breathlessly, her cheeks flushed from the cold November air. “Sorry I’m late.” She hands Alex her cup so that he can take a sip of her tea, like she always does. </p><p>“It was only ten minutes,” Alex says, glancing at the clock behind Jack’s head. “And it’s Monday. That’s pretty good for you.”</p><p>She grabs her tea back from him, sticking her tongue out at him as the steam curls around her face. “I tried extra hard this morning, Alexander. Just for you.”</p><p>They have never filmed together for his show before, just the two of them, Alex realizes as Willow gets Isabelle’s mic on. He has been on her show more times than he can count, and of course they are both in the videos that feature all of the test kitchen chefs, but it is the first time she is standing next to him as Willow gestures to him for him to start the show.</p><p>He messes up the intro a couple of times, which is pretty standard for him, but once he gets rolling it is smooth sailing. Isabelle stands next to him, looking up at him and laughing at the right spots and explaining everything much more clearly than he could. Because it’s Monday morning and everyone else is still upstairs at their desks, the test kitchen is weirdly quiet. The only thing they are actually doing on camera today is feeding the sourdough starter, which takes approximately two and a half seconds even with Isabelle’s explanation of the science behind it, and they spend less time filming than they did waiting for Isabelle to get there, a fact that he does not fail to point out once their mics are off and they are in his office with the door shut.</p><p>In addition to being the host of Wild Card, Alex is also the test kitchen manager, which means that he is the only chef with an office actually in the test kitchen and not a floor above with the rest of the food editors. Most of the time, Isabelle prefers to hide out in his office when they have a break between meetings or shooting videos, sometimes hunched over the table in the corner working on recipes for her book, sometimes bouncing ideas off of him, sometimes grilling him about his love life incessantly while he is trying to do the ordering for next month.</p><p>She props her feet up on his desk, swirling the last of her tea around in her cup, and Alex sits down in his chair, squinting against the bright sun coming in the windows behind her. He probably should have his desk facing the other way so that he can actually get some work done early in the morning, but when he took over for the last manager, he moved it around so that he had a clear view of what seems like the entirety of New York City.</p><p>Without question, it is his favorite place in the world. He moved to the city twelve years ago when he was only eighteen years old and had no idea what he wanted to do with his life. The only thing he knew was that he loved food: loved talking about it, learning about it, and more than anything, eating it. After he graduated from the Culinary Institute, he worked in restaurant kitchens, doing catering on the side when he needed extra money. </p><p>He couldn’t believe it when the magazine hired him. He came in as an intern, making almost nothing and still picking up jobs on the side so he could afford to keep his craphole of an apartment in Brooklyn. In the last eight years at the magazine, he has worked his way up to his current position, which is relatively lucrative, allows him to travel, and let him move to a nicer place (still in Brooklyn because there is nothing in the world that could make him leave). And then they offered him his show, which started off as Jack following him around the test kitchen as he recipe tested or managed the chefs but very quickly turned into Alex just doing whatever he wanted. (The New York Times described it as “part cooking show, part travel show, part trivia show, and part continuous blooper reel” in its article entitled <em> Wild Card: How Alexander Ludwig Became the Breakout Internet Star of the Food World </em>. The day it came out, he got into the office extra early only to find that Isabelle had beaten him there, framed the article, and left it on his desk for him. That was a surprise, but it was certainly no surprise that she had taken extra care to highlight the sentence of the article that named her as “Ludwig’s curated, posh, pastry chef best friend.”) </p><p>She really is the best friend that he has ever had, a fact that she reminds him of all the time but especially when she’s annoying the hell out of him by reminding him six times to order more clover honey when he already has a box on the way or freaking out about the recipe that she is being forced to recreate for her show, DIY Kitchen. Secretly, Alex calls it Bitch Kitchen because it brings out a whole other side of Isabelle, especially when she’s on day three of trying to make Pop Rocks and is ready to slap the shit out of anyone who comes near her.</p><p>“You know it’s nine o’clock again tomorrow,” Alex says now, tapping together a stack of papers on his desk that he should probably be dealing with sooner rather than later and instead shoving them off to the side where may or may not remember them.</p><p>“Hey, I can handle that.”</p><p>Alex snorts. Are you sure?”</p><p>“No. But I will try really hard just for you.”</p><p>It takes Alex about twenty minutes longer to get to the office in Manhattan than it does Isabelle, since he has to come across the East River and she only has to shoot downtown from the Upper West Side, but he doesn’t mind since it gives him extra ammo to tease her with. Even now, she yawns hugely, trying to hide it in the neck of her oversized cable knit sweater. Alex nudges his full cup of coffee towards her.</p><p>“Late night?”</p><p>“You know.” She shrugs, setting her empty mug down and taking a sip of his coffee. It’s not as black as she’d probably like; she’s always been something of a coffee purist (or snob, depending on who you ask), but it will certainly get the trick done. “I was up late working on the book.”</p><p>“You’re always working on the book.”</p><p>“Don’t I know it.” She takes another big sip, handing the cup back to him. “I’ll be more on my game tomorrow, I promise.” They are scheduled to work on sourdough for the rest of the week, given five whole days in case it goes as poorly as their test batch did. </p><p>“Don’t worry about it, Iz. You stress out too much.” </p><p>They truly are the complete opposite of each other, which might be why they work together so well. Where Alex is all over the place, Isabelle is steady. Where Isabelle might be a skosh uptight (not that Alex would ever say that to her, at least not in so many words), he goes with the flow. When she is having a day four breakdown on DIY Kitchen, Alex is the one she looks for, whether it’s to tell her she’s doing great, set up the dehydrator, or once, help construct a Twizzlers mold made out of a metal skewer attached to a Kitchenaid. She let him keep it; it is currently on one of the bookshelves behind him next to her Mentos drying rack made out of styrofoam and toothpicks and the rock tumbler he ordered for her so that she could make the coating for jelly beans.</p><p>Alex glances at his watch. They only have fifteen minutes before the big team meeting starts, which is not enough time to do much of anything. When he looks up at Isabelle, she is yawning again, which he really needs to put a stop to because he is pretty sure it is making him more tired. “C’mon,” he says, standing up and reaching out a hand to pull her up. “Let’s get you some more tea.”</p><p>He means to make it for her, but as usual she takes over, and fifteen minutes later they are settling down in the conference room on the seventy-eighth floor. He had to convince Isabelle to take the stairs and not the elevator, since they only had to go one floor up and they were going to be late if they had to wait for the elevator, so she is extra cranky when she sits down next to Jackie.</p><p>“How’d it go this morning?” Jackie asks, leaning across Isabelle to catch Alex’s eye. She was in the room when Isabelle pitched the sourdough episode of Wild Card to their editor-in-chief, and she certainly knows Alex well enough to know that baking is his kryptonite. </p><p>“I managed to not screw anything up,” Alex says, sitting down on the other side of Isabelle, pulling his phone out of his back pocket and dropping it onto the table. “But we’ll see how tomorrow goes.”</p><p>He doesn’t have a chance to say anything else before Dayo stands up, clearing his throat and waiting for them all to shut up and pay attention. They certainly are not an easy group to corral, not when all seven of them are in the same room, but Dayo has figured it out over the ten years he has been the editor-in-chief. He assembled this team, after all. </p><p>Technically, he is their boss, but that is certainly not how he runs the office. He is the reason that the magazine grew from a relatively out of date and obscure food magazine to the powerhouse that it is now. When he came in as the editor-in-chief, the Youtube channel didn’t exist, and the chefs spent their days testing recipes, writing copy, and eventually leaving to go back to the faster-paced world of restaurants. Alex came to the magazine just a couple of years later, and after Dayo had been there for a few years, he approached Alex with his idea for the chef-specific shows on Youtube, in addition to having them take turns making videos demonstrating recipes. Alex’s show took off, and each chef got their own in turn, Isabelle, then Leven, then Mark and Amandla. Jackie’s is still being workshopped, and Liam’s will come after. Each show gets hundreds of thousands, often millions of views, and Alex gets recognized on the street at least once a day, although he tries to hide his face as much as he can. It is a far cry from where the magazine was when Dayo started, and because he attributes their success to the personalities and talent of his chefs, he lets them have as much creative control as they want (or at least within reason. Sometimes they get a little carried away, if the fact that Amandla and Leven convinced Dayo to let them go to Italy to learn how to make cheese for the pizza series is any indication). They are food editors by name, but they are chefs through and through, and Dayo counts on them to know what will work.</p><p>That is why they are all sitting in this conference room at ten o’clock on a Monday morning, waiting to discuss the Thanksgiving series for next year. They have put out a few Thanksgiving specific videos this year, unattached to any of their shows, but Dayo has much bigger plans for next year. </p><p>Back in the summer, they shot a series about pizza where they split up into teams and each tackled a component to try to come up with the best version possible. Isabelle made pizza dough (entirely on her own because no one in the world can touch her when it comes to baking). Alex and Mark made the sauce, spending far too much money on canned tomatoes. Amandla and Leven took their infamous trip to Italy, learned how to make mozzarella straight from the source, then came back to the test kitchen and promptly had a breakdown when they tried to do it by themselves for the first time. Jackie and Liam handled the toppings, even though Liam kept insisting that pineapple was the best pizza topping over the furious shouts of the rest of the chefs. They all ended up at Jackie’s apartment because of the brick pizza oven in her backyard, where they shot the final episode, ate way too much pizza, and fell asleep sprawled all over her living room. (Final result: two pizzas. One with mortadella, olive oil, pickled chiles, and fresh basil; one with maitake mushrooms, Calabrian chiles, raw garlic, and fresh parm on top.) Everything was very scientific until Alex got a little too wine drunk and started taking the temperature of everything with the laser thermometer, including the inside of the pizza oven, a bowl of ice cubes, and Mark. (“He’s coming in a steamy eight-eight.”)</p><p>The episodes are airing now, and they are a hit, prompting Dayo to propose the next big series: Thanksgiving. “I don’t want to talk about specifics today,” Dayo says, his assistant in the corner taking notes. “We want the camera crew to film that so people can see you all talking about what you like at Thanksgiving and how you want to divide things up. But I’m seeing a series a little longer than the pizza one, maybe six or seven episodes total with teams of two.”</p><p>Alex kicks Isabelle under the table lightly, winking at her when she looks at him. He knows that no matter what she ends up making (of course it’s going to be pie; they all know it), he’s going to try to talk himself onto her team, no matter that he can’t bake to save his life. </p><p>“What’s the timeline look like?” Jackie asks, leaning forward. “If we want to post it in October and November of next year, won’t we have to film in, like…”</p><p>“July,” Dayo says, looking down at his calendar. “Not the most perfect Thanksgiving weather ever, but maybe y’all can make a weekend out of it.”</p><p>“We could go up to my parents’ house on the Cape,” Isabelle offers. She seems perkier now, a  combination of the tea and getting to talk about food, Alex assumes. That’s a surefire way to get any of them to cheer up. </p><p>They spend another hour in the room, talking about the timeline, schedules, and what they might need without going too deeply into specifics. Just like the pizza series, they will all get an Outlook meeting invitation, instructing them all to report to the test kitchen at the same time where they will sit around Isabelle’s station and fight about what sides you really need at Thanksgiving. (It is always, always, always cranberry sauce and Alex doesn’t want to hear anything about it.)</p><p>They all have lunch together, and the rest of the day passes quickly in a blur of recipe testing. A crew is still filming when Alex packs up his stuff for the day (“Jackie Makes Braised Short Ribs”), and he tries to be as unobtrusive as possible when he slips out the door. Isabelle is close on his heels, but he doesn’t realize it until she slips into the elevator after him, right before the doors close.</p><p>“Jesus, Iz,” he says, hitting the button for the lobby and hiking his bag more firmly up over his shoulder as they fly down seventy-seven floors. “Why didn’t you tell me to wait for you?”</p><p>She shrugs, smiling up at him. “Just like to keep you on your toes.”</p><p>The cold November air hits them like a wall when they push through the giant glass doors at the front of One World Trade Center, and he slings his arm around her as they dart across the street to the Oculus. Her cheeks are already red by the time they get there, and she huddles a little closer against his side as she digs inside her bag for her transit pass.</p><p>“Alright, Iz.” He drops his arm from around her, backing away in the direction of his subway. “I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah?”</p><p>“Nine o’clock,” she says, raising her voice to be heard over the streams of people that suddenly criss cross between them. “Don’t be late!”</p><p>🍯💛</p><p>Alex genuinely can’t believe his eyes when he walks into the test kitchen the next morning and sees Isabelle there waiting for him, perched on top of the long counter lining the windowed wall, drinking her tea and talking to Jackie. He actually does a double take, halfway into his office to throw down his coat and bag when he realizes that it is actually her.</p><p>“Hey!” she says brightly, giving him a hug when he gets close enough. Her hair smells like vanilla, just like it always does. He is convinced that she just puts straight vanilla extract behind her ears instead of perfume, but maybe it’s just because she is constantly baking. “You’re late.”</p><p>Alex laughs and glances down at his watch. “I’m five minutes early. I figured I could get some paperwork done while I waited for you to get here.”</p><p>“Well, I’m just full of surprises, aren’t I?”</p><p>Willow comes down from the seventy-eighth floor a couple of seconds later and they quickly get their mics on. It is going to be a much longer day than yesterday, Alex knows. All in all, making the dough is going to take a few hours, and it still has to chill overnight before they can even think about baking.</p><p>“Alright, Iz,” he says when the cameras are trained on them, allowing him to skip an introduction completely since they took care of that the day before. “What are we doing today?”</p><p>Isabelle starts talking a mile a minute about mixing the dough with the starter and the process of autolyse. It is all stuff that technically Alex knows, but it is certainly one thing to know it and another to be able to execute it. Before too long, they are pulling out the starter that they made yesterday and leaning over a bowl on the counter.</p><p>“So we’re going to do the float test,” Alex explains, grabbing a spoon from the jar on the workstation in front of them. </p><p>“Right.” Isabelle is wearing another big sweater today, this one navy blue with white stripes, and she shoves the sleeves up above her elbows when she leans over him to make sure he is doing it right. “So we want the starter to float once we drop it into the water because that means that the fermentation has generated enough gas.” </p><p>Alex gingerly dips the spoon into the starter, pinching a piece of the pass and leaning close to the counter to drop it into the bowl of water. It bobs on the surface for a second before dipping down into the water. “Shit.”</p><p>“It’s fine,” Isabelle says quickly. “Maybe that was a little too big of a piece.”</p><p>“Okay, Jack, cut,” Alex says, and Isabelle snorts. He grabs another piece of starter, this one a little bit smaller, and once again it bobs at the top of the water before sinking to the bottom of the bowl. He puts the spoon down. “Okay, what the hell?”</p><p>Isabelle is aking her head. “It’s not ready.” Jack crouches down to film them as they stare at the bowl like suddenly the starter is going to pop back up to the surface. “But it’s okay,” she says quickly. “We’ll just let it sit for a little bit while we hydrate the flour.”</p><p>“I knew I should not have done a baking episode,” Alex grumbles while Isabelle mixes different flours together and pours in water, gently folding the mixture together.</p><p>Thirty minutes later, they decide to do another float test off camera. “I genuinely will not be able to handle it if this doesn’t work,” Alex says. “Iz, I finally understand how you feel on Bitch Kitchen.”</p><p>Isabelle laughs. “You most certainly do not. Just wait until you’ve been doing this for four days and there is still no end in sight. That’s Bitch Kitchen.”</p><p>“God forbid.”</p><p>Not wanting to set themselves up for another failure, they have Jack pinch off a piece and drop it into the water, and of course it floats, exactly how it is supposed to. “Great, so it’s ready?” Alex asks Isabelle expectantly.</p><p>“It’s ready.”</p><p>But when they turn the camera back on, everything goes straight to hell again. Isabelle starts laughing the second that Alex drops the starter into the water and it drops to the bottom. “No, no!” he says. “It just floated!”</p><p>“Part of me thinks that maybe you popped some of the bubbles when you put it back down on the counter?” she says, but she doesn’t sound all that sure about what she is saying. Alex puts his head in his hands, watching her out of the corner of his eye as she leans over the bowl. “Okay, let me try.”</p><p>Alex leans close to her, the camera zooming in, as she takes the tiniest piece of starter on the edge of the spoon, gently nudging it with her finger to push it into the bowl. Down it goes. “Oh my God,” Isabelle says, dropping the spoon onto the counter with a clatter. “It sank like a brick.”</p><p>They have to take a quick break because Isabelle can’t stop laughing. But when they come back, the float test works on the first try, and Alex quickly pushes the bowl away before anyone can suggest that he try it one more time just to make sure. Isabelle launches into an entirely too complicated for ten in the morning discussion of math and weight and percentages, and it only takes about another ten minutes of adding the starter and salt to the flour mixture and kneading the dough before it is ready to proof for a few hours. </p><p>They have to stick around the kitchen while the dough rises because it requires folding every thirty minutes. Even with all of the waiting around and the Alex sucking at folding dough correctly part, these are the kinds of days that he truly loves the most: when he gets to hang out in the test kitchen with his best friends. They often say that they are The Office but a little more sane and set in a kitchen. </p><p>He has another half hour to go, just finished the last fold of the dough, and he is sitting in his office with Mark, who is wondering aloud what next week is going to look like for him. Mark’s show is called Mad Mark, and it basically involves Mark going on a scavenger hunt around the office (or sometimes the city), set for him by production and his fellow chefs. One time, he learned all about ostrich eggs: what an ostrich farm looks like, how it is run, and how best to cook one. Once he got to make homemade dog food for his chihuahua, Pickles. A few months ago they sent him out into the woods to learn about survivalist cooking. (He was not so happy about that one.)</p><p>Alex has no idea what Mark is going to be doing next week, but that certainly doesn’t stop Mark from trying to figure it out. But Alex has finished doing the ordering for next month, making sure to throw in some extra clover honey for Isabelle because her office stash was looking a little low, so he doesn’t mind. As if on cue, she comes barrelling in, interrupting Mark’s line of questioning, which apparently revolved around whether the next scavenger hunt would result in him meeting Megan Fox. </p><p>“Am I interrupting?” she asks, not really waiting for a response but plopping down in the chair next to Mark’s, throwing her legs up across his lap.</p><p>“Hey, Iz,” he says. “What do you think the chances are of me meeting Megan Fox next week?”</p><p>Isabelle raises an eyebrow at him. “Slim to none. Did you accidentally drink too much cooking wine again?”</p><p>“I’m just asking! If I have to walk around in ostrich shit, then you’d think something good should happen to me in return.”</p><p>“Keep dreaming, Reardon,” she says, rolling her eyes before she pulls a knee to her chest and looks at Alex. “Say, do you still not have plans for Thanksgiving?”</p><p>“Nope,” Alex says, putting down the pen that he has been twirling between his fingers. “My entire family is still abandoning me to go to Cabo.” He wants to go, of course, but there is absolutely no way that he can make that happen with his work schedule this year. </p><p>“So what are you planning on doing then?” Mark asks.</p><p>“I don’t know.” Alex shrugs. “Order Chinese food.”</p><p>“Wrong,” Isabelle says brightly. “First of all, you’re a chef, so get it together. Second of all, you’re going to come to my house.”</p><p>“Oh, am I?”</p><p>“I was originally supposed to go to Nicky’s parents’ house, but they’re getting their floors redone for the fourth time or something so they’re flying off to St. Bart’s until Christmas. So I thought you could come over and we could have a real Thanksgiving.” She pauses. “Albeit a tiny one, but Thanksgiving nonetheless.”</p><p>Alex turns the idea over in his brain quickly. He is certainly not the biggest fan of Isabelle’s boyfriend, but he can put up with him for an afternoon, especially if it means getting to spend time with Isabelle and not sit home alone in his apartment, wishing he was on vacation. “Okay, deal,” he says, figuring that there are no cons to the situation. “Thank you, Iz.”</p><p>“Of course,” she says matter-of-factly. “I can’t let my best friend sit home alone on the best holiday of the year eating fucking Chinese food. That’s crazy talk.”</p><p>“You love Chinese food.”</p><p>“But not on Thanksgiving!” </p><p>He shrugs. “Fair enough.” </p><p>Jack sticks his head in. “We’re ready to go when you two are.” Alex stands up with a heavy sigh, reaching over to help Isabelle up. “It’s not going to be that bad, I promise,” Jack says, but he has seen Alex do a lot of things over the last four years and he would be (and has been) the first to say that Alex is no baker. </p><p>Sure enough, trying to get the bread dough into the baskets so that it can chill overnight is what Alex would call an unmitigated disaster. It starts off fine. They line bread baskets with clean kitchen towels, dumping a whole mess of flour inside the baskets and onto the counter. Isabelle shows him how to shape the bread with her dough, rolling it into a ball by bringing up the sides and pinching them together before she plops the entire thing into her basket, making sure to remind Alex that it should be seam side up.</p><p>Honestly, Alex doesn’t know what happens. He kind of blacks out. He shapes his bread dough fine (Isabelle actually calls it perfect), but then he flips it into his basket seam side down. “Oh no!” he says as soon as he realizes what he’s done. “Oh no. Can I leave it?”</p><p>Isabelle pauses for a second, like she is going to say yes, but the perfectionist Harvard graduate classically trained side of her jumps to the surface. “No, you gotta flip it. It’s not gonna look as good.”</p><p>“Great,” Alex grumbles. “Mine’s gonna be an ugly duckling. Goddammit, it looked so good!” Isabelle is laughing, holds out her hands, covered in flour, for Alex to slide his dough into. “Iz! This is not funny!” </p><p>“More flour,” she manages to say, more laughter bubbling up with her words. Alex tries not to smile, playing up how cranky he is for the cameras, but she is making him feel better. So what if he fucked it up? It’s just bread. He reaches across her to grab the Cambro of flour, quickly sifting more into his basket, and Isabelle carefully settles his dough back in the right way. </p><p>“Oh my God,” he says after they have put their bread in the giant walk-in refrigerator to sit overnight. “That was a nightmare and a half.”</p><p>“You did fine!” She puts her hand on his arm comfortingly as they walk back to his office. He thinks she might be moving a little slowly, her cheeks a tiny bit redder than normal, but maybe he’s just imagining things.</p><p>Even so, he tells her to go home. “You know you always get sick around the holidays,” he says, and it’s true. Last year she had the flu on Christmas with a crazy fever and cough. Alex’s brother and sisters were in the city, and he abandoned them all at his apartment to go over to her place, make sure she had soup and Gatorade and blankets. She had just started dating Nicky, and he was nowhere to be found, which is certainly one of the reasons Alex can barely act like he tolerates him. </p><p>“It’s nothing,” Isabelle says quickly. </p><p>“Well, go home anyways. We can’t do anything more for the video until tomorrow.”</p><p>A look of relief flickers across her face. “Thank you.”</p><p>He goes into his office, looking out the windows and seeing that the sun is already starting to set, streaks of orange running across the skyline. Soon it’ll be dark at three o’clock, but Alex doesn’t mind that, not when he’s all the way up here and feels like he can see clear across the Hudson. He wouldn’t trade this life for a hundred different ones.</p><p>He practically jumps out of his skin when he hears Isabelle’s voice behind him, spinning around to see her standing in the doorway. “You did good today,” she says, a smile playing across her face. “Not as good as me, but still good.”</p><p>“Uh, I’m sorry I didn’t study French pastry in Paris!”</p><p>“That’s why you have me.”</p><p>“Well, then you’d better not go anywhere.”</p><p>“Deal.” She winks at him. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”</p><p>He does not, in fact, see her the next day.</p><p>That night she calls him at nine o’clock. She sounds like absolute garbage, and Alex tells her so. “Well, thank you, Alexander,” she says, sniffling. “For real, I’m so sorry. I know we can’t push it back to next week and that dough can’t sit any longer.”</p><p>“Don’t worry about it,” he says, even as he is internally worrying about it. They have made it through the hardest part of the process but they certainly haven’t reached the finish line yet. “You need to get better in time for your favorite holiday. Just tell me what I need to do.”</p><p>So now he is standing in the test kitchen next to Mark, who is good for emotional support in a pinch but certainly isn’t Isabelle. “As you may have noticed,” he says to the camera, “this is not Isabelle.”</p><p>“Are you sure they didn’t notice?”</p><p>Alex ignores him. “Mark is going to help me out today because Isabelle isn’t feeling well.”</p><p>“Do you know what to do?”</p><p>Alex shrugs. “Vaguely. Isabelle told me what to do, so we’ll see.”</p><p>They set about getting the dough out of the fridge and letting it sit while the dutch ovens preheat. It looks pretty damn good, if Alex does say so himself, even his ugly duckling loaf which Isabelle managed to make prettier with a little bit of reshaping the day before after it went awry for him. When the dutch ovens are ready, they score the dough, gingerly slide the dough into the dutch ovens, and put it in the ovens.</p><p>Alex spends the next hour working on a recipe with Amandla and trying not to check the ovens every two minutes to see if everything looks right. When it’s time to come back and pull the bread out, he has a weird nervous energy about him until Mark tells him to knock it off, it’s just bread, for fuck’s sake. </p><p>He’s almost afraid to look, but the bread is perfect with a nice dark crust on top and the scores split open just the right amount. He has to let it rest for two hours, which he manages to do just barely, and he FaceTimes Isabelle when he cuts into it. She squeals even though it makes her cough.</p><p>“Alex, it looks perfect!” Her voice is tinny as it comes over the speaker of his phone, but he can hear the gravel in her throat. She is laid up on the couch in her living room; he can see piles of tissues and empty mugs scattered around her, and he wonders if Nicky has come over to help her. </p><p>“Cause of you, Iz,” he says, aware of Jack standing there with the camera pointing at him, and he angles his phone towards the screen so she is on video too. “Feel better, okay?” After they hang up, he quickly texts her to tell her to let him know if she needs anything before shoving his phone back into his pocket. Mark is rounding up the chefs lingering around the test kitchen, summoned by the smell of freshly baked bread.</p><p>They gather around Isabelle’s workstation, cutting pieces of bread and getting the good butter out one of the fridges that dot the room. “To Isabelle,” Mark says, attempting to cheers Jackie across the circle even though she is way too far away and they are both far too short to make that work. </p><p>“To Isabelle,” Alex says, laughing.</p><p>“And cut,” Jack says. Alex lets out a big sigh. He doesn’t ever pretend to be anyone but himself when he is on camera, but even so, it’s a relief when this one is over. Maybe the next one won’t be so painful, although it was worth it in the end, he thinks.</p><p>Like he said… he wouldn’t trade any of this in a heartbeat. </p><p>🍯💛</p><p>“Pass the mashed potatoes.”</p><p>“Pass the green beans.”</p><p>“Pass the turkey?”</p><p>“Pass your plate.”</p><p>Alex hands Isabelle his plate, and she grins at him over the candles and veritable mountain of food that sit on her kitchen table between them. They have already finished round one of dinner and are going back for seconds. Isabelle’s cat slinks around the table, brushing up against his legs and looking for dropped pieces of turkey. (Okay, fine, Alex is dropping them on purpose, but the stupid thing is so cute he can’t help himself.) </p><p>It is just the two of them, and it has been all day. He gets there at noon; after asking Isabelle six times whether she wanted him to bring anything and getting a negative response each time, he decides that wine would be the safest bet. It’s not like he can show up with a pie that would be better than anything Isabelle is making herself.</p><p>She kisses his cheek quickly, wearing her bright red and orange Thanksgiving sweater that she’s had since her freshman year of college. Her apartment is bright and warm, fairy lights twinkling on the walls (Alex was the one who hung them for her when she moved into this place, practically killing himself stepping off a ladder when the cat ran underneath his feet) and delicious smells coming from the kitchen.</p><p>He toes his shoes off at the door, sitting down in the living room and waiting for Isabelle to bring him a glass of wine. He hasn’t seen her since she was out sick (sure enough, it was the flu), but he FaceTimed her every day and she looks a hundred times better now. “It smells great, Iz,” he calls to her just as she comes around the counter into the living room, wine in hand.</p><p>“Thank you,” she says. “It’s not going to be much, since it’s just the two of us.”</p><p>“Wait, what?” He takes a sip. “Where’s Nicky?”</p><p>She rolls her eyes. “Don’t ask.” So he doesn’t, waiting for her to sit down beside him and throw her legs up over his lap like she always does. Isabelle convinces Alex to watch the parade, although she concedes a little bit by letting him flip over to football when the commercials are on. </p><p>The turkey is already in the oven, and Alex can smell herb butter as it cooks. Later on, they make potatoes and gravy and Brussels sprouts, moving around each other easily in Isabelle’s tiny kitchen. (The Upper West Side really doesn’t make them like Brooklyn.) Isabelle plays Ariana Grande quietly in the background and asks Alex what she missed for the week that she was out of work. He tells her that Mark had to learn how to make pancake art for Mad Mark (sadly, there was no Megan Fox in sight) and ended up practically flipping a griddle in the process.</p><p>“I wonder if we could try to get Megan Fox on Mirror Mirror,” Isabelle says as she checks on the turkey, elbowing Alex out of the way to get the oven door fully open. “Mark would really owe us then.”</p><p>“He would pass out and we both know it.” Isabelle is referring to Leven’s show, which Alex is fully convinced that Leven came up with just so that she could meet Jason Momoa. (She hasn’t yet.) The entire premise of the show is that celebrities come on and cook with Leven, standing back to back so that they can’t see each other with only Leven’s verbal instructions for guidance. She is one hundred percent the best person for the job, patient and clear. If it were Alex or Isabelle, it would be an unmitigated disaster (although some of them are anyways). </p><p>“You’re not wrong.” Isabelle closes the oven door with a bang. Alex puts his knife down from where he is chopping garlic and grabs his phone from Isabelle’s counter, shooting off a text to Dayo and Leven that just says <em> MM: Megan Fox??? </em>Dayo probably gets a dozen texts a week like that, but sometimes it works. “But Mark was not one the one who had to sit down when Scarlett Johansson walked into the kitchen.”</p><p>“Hey.” Alex raises an eyebrow at her. “Do you want to start this game? I very clearly remember the Zac Efron Incident, as does everyone else.”</p><p>“It was Zac Efron! At least I had the good sense to walk away and not just stand there staring like I had seen a unicorn.”</p><p>Alex shrugs and turns back to the garlic, muttering “get your head in the game” when Isabelle turns away so that she whips back around and pelts him with a handful of lettuce. </p><p>Isabelle made pumpkin pecan pie for dessert because she knows it is Alex’s favorite, even though she would much rather have done something more bespoke and hipster. They leave all the leftovers on the table and eat pie on the couch, watching Love Actually per Isabelle’s rule that the second Thanksgiving dinner is over, it is time for Christmas. Alex watches Andrew Lincoln stand on Keira Knightley’s doorstep and silently tell her that to him, she is perfect as Isabelle falls asleep on his shoulder.</p><p>He can’t take credit for that fact, he thinks as he slides out from underneath Isabelle, the credits playing softly in the background. He covers her up with a blanket, smoothing her hair off of her forehead as he does so, knowing that he’ll be back here in about a week to help her put her Christmas tree up. They’ll have hot chocolate and Hersey’s kisses cookies and Isabelle will let him put the star on top of the tree, and it’ll be just like what he remembers doing as a kid except now he’s doing it with his best friend.</p><p>As he eases out the door, he thinks, not for the first time, how sweet this life he has stumbled upon actually is. </p><p>🍯💛</p><p><b>Tyler</b> Isabelle: “I really don’t feel well.” Alex: “I FEEL GREAT!!!”</p><p><b>SSTurtle</b> Their friendship is what made me sub to this channel. They need a show together.</p><p>
  <b>Calla </b>
  <span>Isabelle, a professional pastry chef who went to baking school: “I learned this on the Internet because I’ve done a lot of googling about bread” LOL</span>
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<a name="section0002"><h2>2. i whisper things, the city sings them back to you</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>sometimes i wake up in a different bedroom<br/>i whisper things, the city sings them back to you<br/>/ green light by lorde</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>For the last five years, even since she started at the magazine, Isabelle has invited Alex over during the first weekend of December to help her put up her Christmas tree. She bribes him with food and alcohol; a couple of years ago they got way too drunk on peppermint schnapps, and Alex ended up falling asleep on Isabelle’s sofa with her cat. She woke him up the next morning with spicy scrambled eggs and enough coffee to fill a bathtub, and then he proceeded to blame her for the next three days for his massive hangover. He’s a big guy but he can be a bit of a baby about his alcohol. (“Talk to me when you’re thirty years old, Isabelle,” he says whenever she gives him a hard time about it. “We’ll see how you do.”)</p><p>Sometimes there is less drinking, but there probably won’t be less this year. Isabelle invites Alex and Nicky, and as usual, only Alex shows up. Nicky is an investment banker, which means that he works a lot of hours doing something that Isabelle doesn’t really understand. Sometimes, she doesn’t mind. She works crazy hours too and the closer her cookbook deadline gets, the less time she has to do anything else. </p><p>But sometimes, like on holidays or her birthday or their one year anniversary last month, she wishes that he would just stop working for one day. When she wakes up this morning, she has a text from him (and has a flash of resentment that he couldn’t even call), telling her that he has to go into work and he’ll see her tomorrow. She loves Nicky, of course she does, but sometimes it just feels like something is missing. It is a thought that she bats away as soon as it pops up.</p><p>But today it doesn’t matter, because just like always, she can count on Alex. He shows up right on time at four o’clock that afternoon (she is pretty sure that he has never been late for anything in his entire life, one of his most annoying personality traits), Fireball in hand and his cheeks red with cold. He holds it out to her. “Thought we could use this a little bit later?”</p><p>“Bless you,” she says, grabbing his hand and pulling him into the apartment. The fireplace is on, there are cookies in the oven (there is always something in the oven), and Spotify is playing Christmas radio because even though it’s only December sixth, it is never too early for Christmas in Isabelle’s book. She would have her Christmas tree up on Halloween if it were socially acceptable.</p><p>“So,” Alex says as he kicks his shoes off and pulls the beanie off of his head, smoothing his hair down. “What’s the plan for today? Cause I’m thinking tree first, then we go to Motorino’s for pizza, then we came back here and get piss drunk and watch movies.”</p><p>“That sounds perfect.” Alex knows exactly what went down with Nicky that morning. Isabelle texts him basically every second of every day that they aren’t together (although they are together more than they are not), and besides Nicky he is the only person in her life who truly knows everything about her. He might, in fact, know more than Nicky because Nicky doesn’t know how she likes her tea or that she named her chef’s knife Clove or what her meltdown during the Snickers episodes of DIY Kitchen looked like. Alex knows all of those things. Alex knows everything.</p><p>She can vividly remember the day she met him. She had just been hired at the magazine, and she was so nervous for her first day of work that she threw up three times in the bathroom of her brand new apartment (not actually new but new to her). She had just moved back from Paris the month before after spending a year there studying pastry at École Grégoire-Ferrandi, and she had no idea what she was getting herself into.</p><p>She walked into the office on the seventy-eighth floor for the first time and was immediately met by a red-haired girl who Isabelle could adequately describe as a ball of energy. She introduced herself as Jackie and showed Isabelle around the office. It was overwhelming, to say the least, tons of people and faces and names to remember, and Isabelle was relieved when Jackie finally took her to her desk and told her to settle in.</p><p>She had only been sitting down for about five minutes, not even long enough to get her email preferences set up the way she wanted them, when someone popped up in the cubicle next to her, scaring the absolute hell out of her. “Jesus!”</p><p>“It’s Alexander actually,” he said, resting his arms on top of the cubicle wall and smiling down on her. “But you can call me Alex.” He reached out to shake her hand, his fingers warm against her skin. </p><p>That was the start of everything. And now, five years later, she is still in the same apartment and at the same job and she has the best friend that anyone could ever ask for. Without Alex, she doesn’t know what she would do, whether it’s when she is melting down during a DIY Kitchen episode, sick with the flu, or ready to put her Christmas tree up.</p><p>“Okay, good,” he says. “Point me towards the tree.”</p><p>As much as Isabelle wants a real tree, she doesn’t want to deal with her cat trying to climb it and eat the branches all month, so she settles for a fake one. It looks real, and Alex came up with the idea of putting pine-scented air fresheners in it a couple of years back so that if you aren’t looking closely, you can’t really tell the difference. It takes them a while to set up, screwing the poles together and putting the branches where they belong. It is another hour of stringing lights, hanging ornaments, and trying to keep Pep, Isabelle’s cat, from slinging ornaments across the room in a dramatic fashion. By the time the tree is up, Isabelle is starving.</p><p>“It looks great, Iz.” Alex flops down on the burgundy and gold tufted ottoman that she got at an estate sale. It is huge, big enough for him to sit on comfortably, and he leans back onto the sofa, admiring the lights twinkling on the tree. Almost all of Isabelle’s ornaments are food-themed (duh), and she can see a tiny silver whisk glinting on a branch as she sits down next to him.</p><p>“Thanks for your help,” she says as she rests her head on his shoulder, his arm slipping around her. “Do you ever get tired of helping me with shit?”</p><p>“Never,” he says quickly. “That’s what I’m here for. Besides, you help me with things all the time.”</p><p>“Name one.”</p><p>“Sourdough.”</p><p>“Oh, yeah.” Isabelle catches sight of a little loaf of bread ornament that Alex hung towards the top of the tree. “But you didn’t need my help with that.”</p><p>Alex makes a little scoffing noise in the back of his throat. “Yeah, right. I would have been a disaster without you. To be fair, I was kind of a disaster with you there too, but just less so.”</p><p>They sit there for a few more minutes, taking in the tree and the crackling fire and the smell of sugar drifting in from the kitchen. Isabelle loves her apartment all of the time, but it’s even more magical at Christmas. It’s not big by any means (she uses the word cozy to describe it a lot), but there are floor to ceiling bookshelves and fairy lights everywhere at any time of the year and lots of color from the rug to the sofas to the paintings above the fireplace. With the Christmas tree up, it seems like her own little slice of heaven.</p><p>As if on cue it starts snowing, big white flakes drifting down almost lazily outside the window. “C’mon,” Alex says, jolting up and pulling Isabelle along with him. “Let’s go to Motorino before it starts really coming down.”</p><p>They pull on their coats and boots and hats, Alex settling his beanie down over his ears. Motorino is only a couple of blocks away; it is their favorite pizza place within walking distance of Isabelle’s apartment. Alex slings his arm over her shoulders as they walk; the streets are empty and the snow muffles their footsteps. They don’t have to say anything, which is nice; Isabelle feels like Alex is the one person in her life who she can spend hours and hours with without having to talk. It’s a comfortable silence, the kind that comes when you know someone better than you know yourself.</p><p>Nicky doesn’t call her that night, and Alex ends up sleeping over after a little too much Fireball. Her second bedroom was converted into her office a long time ago, so he stretches out on the couch like he usually does, falling asleep with Pep sitting protectively on his chest. He sleeps at her house so much that he has extra clothes in her closet (some of which she has stolen from him when she ends up falling asleep at his house), and when he wakes up the next morning, they get coffee and bagels and sit at the coffee shop to watch the snow. Isabelle doesn’t want Alex to leave, even after they’ve been together for almost twenty-four hours, and she hugs him hard when he tells her he should get home before the snow gets any worse.</p><p>“Okay,” she says reluctantly, holding the door open for him. “Text me when you’re home.”</p><p>“I will!” He waves at her over his shoulder as he heads down the hallway to the elevator, and she doesn’t close her apartment door until he has disappeared from sight.</p><p>She spends the rest of the weekend working on her book and baking and meeting up with Nicky for lunch on Sunday. He seems distracted, but no more distracted than he normally is when he is working a lot. </p><p>Needless to say, going back to work on Monday morning is a relief. Thankfully for Isabelle, it is ice cream week.</p><p>
  <b>Isabelle Makes Gourmet Ben &amp; Jerry’s Ice Cream | DIY Kitchen</b>
</p><p>When she gets to the test kitchen (only five minutes late since she made her tea at home), it is full of activity, people setting up lights and cameras and a tower made out of Ben &amp; Jerry’s pints. She knows she has to move more quickly than she would for a Snickers or Pop Rocks or Oreos episode, since the ice cream is going to start melting. All of the chefs are behind her, Amandla sitting off to the side on her laptop, Jackie and Liam at the stoves, Mark and Leven at the far workstation chopping vegetables. Alex is in his office; she catches sight of him leaning over his desk, his glasses on and a frown on his face as he twirls a pencil in one hand absentmindedly.</p><p>“You ready to go?” Josh asks, stretching out his shoulder before he picks up the camera.</p><p>“All set.” Isabelle turns back towards him, her mic chilly against her skin until she gets used to it. Her director, Jen, points at her, indicating that it’s time to start, and Isabelle launches into her introduction. “Hi everyone, I’m Isabelle, I’m in the test kitchen, and today I’m going to be making gourmet Ben &amp; Jerry’s.”</p><p>Unlike Wild Card (a fitting name for anything Alex does), DIY Kitchen is more scripted, following the same format every time: she introduces the snack that she is going to be recreating, tastes a few varieties, reads the ingredients aloud (usually a nightmare’ the Pizza Rolls ingredient list almost took her out completely), sees if she can find anything on the computer about how the snack is made, and then sets about trying to make it herself. Sometimes it goes quickly and she is done in two days (Oreos, SnoBalls); sometimes it takes her four days and she is genuinely considering quitting by the time she is done (Pop Rocks, Kit Kats). </p><p>This one is going to be fun. She is good at making ice cream, and she won’t have to temper chocolate or fuck around with the molecular structure of things or create something normally only made by a machine in a factory and protected by a patent (fuck you, Doritos). </p><p>As soon as she starts taking the tops off the pints and ripping off the protective plastic, the other chefs start gravitating towards her station, leaving behind their tasks. Soon enough, they are embroiled in a fierce argument.</p><p>“Okay,” Isabelle says, pointing her spoon at Mark and speaking through a mouthful of Chunky Monkey. “What is the best ice cream flavor? Pistachio.”</p><p>“No!” Mark takes a clean spoon from where he keeps them in the breast pocket of his apron and whips it onto the floor, Josh following his movement with the camera. “It’s cherry fucking garcia, Iz!”</p><p>Alex makes a face, his mouth full of Brewed to Matter. “Absolutely not. It’s coffee or it’s nothing.”</p><p>“I don’t think so,” Leven says, reaching across the counter and pulling Urban Bourbon towards. “Give me anything with nuts and caramel.”</p><p>“That gives me an idea,” Isabelle says, turning back to the camera. “I think we should try to name the ice cream flavors after us.” They spend the next twenty minutes brainstorming flavors and names and mix-ins.</p><p>Eventually, Mark and Leven wander back to their stations, but Alex stays with Isabelle to help her cut open one of the pints that has a core. Isabelle hands him the cleaver he uses as a chef’s knife, waiting for him to saw through the middle, pint carton and all.</p><p>“Core, my ass!” Alex says heatedly once they’ve cut it in half to see that the core only goes down a couple of inches before trickling off and disappearing completely. “Isn’t it supposed to go all the way down the middle?”</p><p>“That’s what the website says.” Isabelle pulls up a picture on her phone, showing Alex and the camera that the core is supposed to go all the way from top to button. </p><p>Dayo happens to walk by, coming over to see how it is going. “Well, that’s false advertising,” he says, taking one of the pint halves from Alex and examining it carefully.</p><p>“I’m going to start a class action lawsuit,” Alex says determinedly. “The core is the best part.”</p><p>“Well, I’ll put one in your pint then, Alex.”</p><p>It takes her another half hour to clean up all of the ice cream, read the ingredients, and watch a couple of YouTube videos about how they make Ben &amp; Jerry’s, but she already has some ideas floating around in her head. She has decided on four flavors, one each for Alex, Mark, Leven, and Jack, whose favorite flavor is mint chocolate chip, a classic. </p><p>“Okay,” Isabelle says once her workstation is clean. She grabs her beat up Moleskine from where she threw it off to the side that morning, opening up to a fresh page and making a list of what she needs to make for each flavor. “I don’t think we have time to start making the ice cream today, right?” she asks Jen, and Jen confirms that they do not, since Amandla is filming Shadow Chef that afternoon. “Okay, so I’m just going to start prepping some of the individual components that can sit overnight.”</p><p>The rest of the afternoon is spent roasting nuts, cold steeping espresso, making hot fudge, candying cherries, and mixing up a cherry compote that she sticks in Alex’s dehydrator to sit overnight. Alex pops in and out like he normally does, swiping spoonfuls of hot fudge or a handful of almonds when he thinks her back is turned. He is always her sounding board, giving her advice (when she is stuck) or coming up with ways to improve the original (when she is on the right track) or telling her that it’s perfect (no matter what).</p><p>When DIY Kitchen started, she had a couple of really tough episodes back to back: Gushers, Kit Kats, and Cheetos. She distinctly remembers Alex dropping by every hour during the Cheetos episode and telling her that her Cheetos weren’t crunchy enough. She was exhausted after days of working on it and weeks of frustrating episodes, and she was about ready to quit by the time she was done. When she finally got it right, he stopped by to try the finished product, but before he could open his mouth to say anything, she warned him, “Just so you know, I can accept zero criticism right now.”</p><p>“Iz, they’re perfect!”</p><p>That is just who Alex is and what he does. He wants everyone around him to succeed, and he does whatever he can to make their lives easier. That is why he is such a good test kitchen manager; he can anticipate what everyone might want or need before they even know they want or need it. Ever since he found out that Isabelle prefers clover honey over regular, he has never failed to order it for her and she always has her own secret stash in his office. </p><p>He proves again what a good friend he is when she gets into the office the next morning to find that he has somehow overnight managed to procure custom labels and put them on empty pint containers. They look exactly like Ben &amp; Jerry’s pints with bright colors and the field in the background and thick bubble letters that spell out “Isabelle’s” and the names they came up with the day before. </p><p>“Alex,” she squeals when he presents them to her proudly. “These are perfect!”</p><p>The first thing she does when they start filming is accidentally break the handle off of the trash pull under her workstation. It has been loose for weeks, jiggling in her hand every time she opens the trash, and this time it snaps off, leaving her stumbling backwards. The camera shakes as Josh laughs.</p><p>“Jesus Christ!” She holds up the shiny silver handle. “Well, that’s super annoying. Maybe I can just weld it back on.”</p><p>“You can weld it back on?” Mark asks as he rushes past, a cast iron skillet in one hand and a head of garlic in the other.</p><p>“Well… Alex can.”</p><p>He appears beside her like he was just waiting to be summoned, taking the handle from her and examining it carefully. “I can fix this no problem.” So she sits down on a stool, making notes in her Moleskine and watching as Alex pulls his tools out from the room they use for storing camera equipment and drills the handle back onto the cabinet door.</p><p>“If anyone who makes tools is watching this,” he says while he works. “We could really use some new ones. This drill is older than Isabelle.”</p><p>Once the trash can is fixed, Alex disappears to his office, patting Isabelle on the shoulder. She has a lot of work to do, and the rest of the day goes by in a blur of making creme anglaise, churning the ice cream in machines, and adding in the mix-ins. Alex comes back at the end of the day to help her pack the ice cream into pints.</p><p>“You did great, Iz,” he says as they walk out of the building together. “It looked like you were having actual fun this time.”</p><p>If anyone would know, it’s Alex. He has only ever missed the filming of a couple of episodes of DIY Kitchen, one when he was out sick, one when he was on vacation in Hawaii with his siblings, and the last when he was in Colombia filming how chocolate is made for Wild Card. He has seen her to her major triumphs and her failures alike, and no matter what sort of mood she is (he refers to the spectrum as Day One Isabelle and Day Four Isabelle), he is always Day One Alex: cheerful, encouraging, and optimistic.</p><p>“I was,” she says, beaming up at him. It is snowing again (although it may never have really stopped), the pretty kind of flakes that are big and soft and not yet turned into slush by the streets of New York. “This was the kind that I like.”</p><p>“Hey, you’re coming to my Christmas party, right?” Alex asks as they push through the front door of the Oculus, suddenly surrounded by hordes of people trying to get home. </p><p>“Of course. You know I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”</p><p>“Good,” Alex says, waving good-bye to her as he heads off towards his train. “Hasta mañana, Iz.”</p><p>The next day is even easier than the last two have been, full of work but the kind of work that makes Isabelle feel extra lucky that this is what she gets to do for work: make ice cream and sit around eating it with her best friends. All of the frustration that she has with Nicky melts away as soon as she steps into the kitchen that morning.</p><p>The first thing she has to do is take the cannoli mold out of the middle of Alex’s ice cream, pour in the hot fudge, and freeze it for another hour, but when that is done the ice cream is ready to go. Isabelle sets it up on the counter, explaining what each flavor is as Josh films them, moving the camera steadily down the line of homemade pints. There is Coffee Alex-treme, which is coffee with a hot fudge core and brownie batter. Mark’s ice cream is Cherry Mark-ia, cherry ice cream with candied cherries and fudge flakes. Leven’s is Urban Bou-rambin, caramel ice cream with almonds, fudge, and bourbon caramel that Isabelle is going to take back home and develop a recipe around for her cookbook. And the last is Mint Moose Jack’s, dark chocolate mint ice cream with marshmallows and little bits of cookie.</p><p>“God, this is good,” Jack says with his mouth full, trying to bodily block Amandla from grabbing the pint from him. “You should market this.”</p><p>“What do you think?” Isabelle asks Alex, looking up at him. He and Jackie are taking turns eating spoonfuls from his container. </p><p>“It’s fucking fantastic, Iz,” he says, elbowing her in the side. “Perfect.”</p><p>“Okay, great. Can you just communicate to Dayo that this was successful?”</p><p>“Dayo!” he screams over his shoulder. “Successful!”</p><p>“I mean when you go upstairs, dipshit.”</p><p>He smiles down at her, a tiny drop of ice cream wiggling on the end of one of his beard hairs, and she reaches up to wipe it off before it falls. “You did good, Iz.” Amandla gives up on Jack and snatches Alex’s ice cream from him before he can grab it back, but he lets it go without a fight. “You’ll make me more, right?”</p><p>“Anything you want.”</p><p>And she truly means that. </p><p>🍯💛</p><p>Every single year, Alex has a giant Christmas party. Everyone from the office comes, plus all of his friends from culinary school who still work in the city, his siblings, and all of the random people that Alex has met and befriended over the years (bartenders at fancy restaurants, an Uber or driver too, even some ex-girlfriends). It is a testament to who Alex really is that he can bring everyone together and make them all feel like they have known each other for years.</p><p>It takes Alex basically all month to get ready for the party, which is on the twenty-third of December, and he usually enlists Isabelle’s help. She is always in charge of bringing dessert, and before she started dating Nicky, she would come over extra early to help him push the furniture up against the wall and barricade the door to his bedroom (an unfortunate necessity after Alex found his old roommate hooking up with a random girl who neither Alex or Isabelle had ever seen before in his bed). </p><p>Last year was a bit of a disaster on Isabelle’s end. All morning she was planning on heading over to Alex’s around three o’clock to help him get ready; she had confirmed it with him more than once. But when the time came for her to pack up and leave, Nicky showed up at her apartment with a bottle of wine in hand, wanting to hang out even though he knew about the party, had promised he would go with her so she could finally introduce him to all of her friends. From the beginning, Nicky had been unsure about her friendship with Alex, clearly uncomfortable no matter how many times she told him that Alex was her best friend and nothing more, but her best friend all the same, and she wasn’t going to give him up. The fight ended with Nicky saying, “I know you’re not doing this to me, Isabelle” as she walked out the door to go to Alex’s anyways, a few hours late. </p><p>Alex took it in stride, like he does everything. Upon seeing the look on her face when she walked in the door, he put a cocktail in her hand and pointed her in the direction of Jackie and Leven, who managed to console her for the rest of the night and leave her feeling much better than she had when she got there, although the hangover the next morning was unbelievable. She made up with Nicky the next day and promised Alex that she majorly owed him one. </p><p>This year, not the gods themselves can keep Isabelle away from Alex’s place to help him set up. Nicky can’t make it, although Isabelle isn’t sure whether he actually has work to do or whether he is just avoiding Alex entirely. It has been just over a year since they started dating, and she can count on one hand the number of times she has gotten them in the same room as each other. Every time she does, it is awkward. They are both cordial to each other, but it is clear that they are well aware that they only have one thing in common, and that is Isabelle. She is the only reason that they are putting up with each other.</p><p>The two of them could not be more different. They are both tall and they both love Isabelle, but that is where the similarities end. Where Nicky likes everything by the book (even more so than Isabelle does), Alex is flexible and takes whatever life throws at him. Where Nicky likes to schedule things down to the minute, Alex goes where the wind takes him. They even look completely opposite, Nicky with his dark hair cropped close to his head and Alex, blonde hair that he insists on growing out at the top of his head and shaving on the sides so that he looks like what Isabelle imagines the Viking kings looked like back in the day. Standing next to each other, they look ridiculous, but they try, both of them do, for Isabelle’s sake.</p><p>But tonight she is on her own, or at least as on her own as she could ever be when she is with Alex (which is not a lot). He finally has his Christmas tree up; he is the total opposite of Isabelle in that he puts off doing it until the very last second. Sometimes it’s not completely decorated until Christmas Day, but this year it looks pretty good, although Isabelle has to stop herself from moving some ornaments around. She spots the loaf of bread ornament that she gave him last week to commemorate their video together; it matches the one she has on her tree at home.</p><p>Their video came out a couple of weeks ago, and it was a hit; it already has a few million views and it is steadily gaining more every day. People love Alex and Isabelle together, another thing that drives Nicky up the wall. The top comment on the video is Alex’s favorite: “It is so interesting to see Isabelle completely in her element. I’m so used to see her on the verge of over it with the tempering chocolate or the Pop Rocks making.” Alex laughed so hard when he saw it that he had to sit down.</p><p>Even so, Alex is sure that he will never bake bread again. (Isabelle is less sure; Dayo has already approached her about being on Wild Card again to make doughnuts with sourdough starter.)</p><p>The two of them spend a few hours alone in his apartment before people start showing up. Alex lets Isabelle take charge of moving around the furniture while he gets the food and the alcohol ready, but they move too quickly, getting everything done about forty-five minutes before eight o’clock, the time in the mass text invitation that Alex sent out a couple of weeks ago. He flops down on the sofa, waiting for Isabelle to sit down next to him.</p><p>She looks around his apartment as she does, realizing that she is exhausted and wondering if Alex will let her take the world’s fastest nap. The big windows in the living room look out towards the East River; she can just catch a glimpse of the water if she squints through the buildings. She knows it is why Alex chose this place and that if he ever moves again, it will be closer to the water. She helped him decorate it; when she met him, he had just moved in. The apartment was full of things like the old futon he had from his culinary school days, a bookshelf made out of planks of wood balanced on cinder blocks, two mattresses stacked up on top of each other with no bed frame, and a television that took up one entire wall. She let him keep the television, but they got rid of everything else, spending a day and a half wandering around Ikea before Isabelle was satisfied with his new furniture. </p><p>“So…” Isabelle says, pulling the giant knit blanket that her mom made for Alex for Christmas a couple of years ago off the back of the couch and spreading it across her legs. “Any girls coming tonight?”</p><p>“Loads. You, Jackie, Lev, Amandla…”</p><p>“Shut up.” She shoots him a look. “You know what I mean.”</p><p>“Yeah, a couple. I don’t know.” He grabs the blanket from her, dragging half of it over to his side. “This girl from my gym. And then that girl from the Feeding America fundraiser a couple months ago.”</p><p>The fundraiser had been back in July. All of the chefs go every year; it is something that they always do together, and Leven always jokingly refers to it as their prom. They get dressed up, take a limo to wherever the fundraiser is being held (last year it was at Ramscale in the West Village), and get absolutely hammered on free alcohol. </p><p>Alex is already buzzed by the time they get to Ramscale, but it is a chill, easy sort of drunk, not a getting kicked out of karaoke for throwing up on the stage drunk. Isabelle has been in charge of getting him from the limo into the venue, but once they are there, it is Leven’s turn to take over. She cannot get over how beautiful it is, with its wall to wall windows and bright hardwood floors and sweeping views of lower Manhattan, the Hudson, and the harbor. </p><p>The room is already packed full of people (they were a little bit late, like that was new), and it takes Isabelle a while to get to the bar. She is allowing Alex one more gin and tonic, but then he is cut off, otherwise he is liable to go hunting across the ballroom for Scarlett Johansson, who is the face of the charity. By the time she gets their drinks, Amandla right behind her juggling the rest of them, they have been stepped on and elbowed about a hundred times. She is only slightly confused when she gets back to the table where Leven has parked them only to find Leven and Jackie sitting there alone looking grumpy.</p><p>“Did you lose the guys already?” Isabelle hands Leven her martini, setting the rest of the drinks down carefully. Jackie reaches across the table for hers, practically upending Mark’s whiskey sour in the process.</p><p>“Well, I didn’t try to!” Leven retorts. “They ran off. You know I have absolutely no control over them.” </p><p>Isabelle quickly scans the room, spotting Alex in his bright blue fitted suit through the crowd. His back is towards her, so she isn’t able to see the girl he is talking to until she is right at his elbow, his drink in hand. “Hey,” she says, handing it to him. Even in heels, he is a foot taller than her. “Here you go.”</p><p>“Thanks, Iz.” He grins down at her. “What would I do without you?”</p><p>She shrugs, finally realizing that there is a girl standing in front of him, holding her own drink and looking at Alex like he is a goddamn unicorn. “Hi,” Isabelle says, sticking out her hand. “I’m Isabelle. I work with Alex.”</p><p>“Lauren,” the girl says, shaking her hand. Automatically, Isabelle is suspicious of her. Alex doesn’t really date; he never has, not since Isabelle met him at least. Over the years, they have had extensive conversations about what kind of girls he actually likes, but he never really has a concrete answer. Was this it? Was this girl the answer?</p><p>“She’s the sous at Beauty &amp; Essex,” Alex tells her. Great, Isabelle thinks. That is one of her favorite restaurants in New York with its two story chandelier and menu full of small plates, and now she will think of this girl every time she goes. </p><p>“I love it there,” Isabelle says, noticing that the girl can’t take her eyes off of Alex, even when Isabelle is talking to her. “How long have you been there?”</p><p>They make small talk for another couple of minutes before Isabelle manages to excuse herself, not very gracefully, but she doesn’t much care at that point. She makes her way back to the table. The girls have been joined by Dayo, Mark, and Jack, so Isabelle tries to hide how cranky she is when she sits down. It does not fool Leven and Jackie.</p><p>“C’mon,” Jackie said, grabbing her arm and hauling her upright. “Let’s go.”</p><p>She drags Isabelle off to the corner of the room, next to one of the windows where they are hidden from view by a pillar and a planter. Leven comes trotting along behind, telling them to slow down because if she breaks a heel, she is going to be very pissed. “Okay, what’s wrong?” Jackie asks, dragging Isabelle to a stop. It is dark outside, the city lit up around them, and Isabelle sits down on the window sill, crossing her ankles so that no one across the room gets a clear look up her dress.</p><p>“Nothing’s wrong. Why would you think that?”</p><p>“Because we aren’t blind, Isabelle,” Leven chimes in. “You’ve got that look on your face.”</p><p>“What look?”</p><p>“Bitch Kitchen Day Four,” Jackie says. “Like you simultaneously want to quit your job and-or kill someone.”</p><p>Isabelle doesn’t say anything, and Jackie and Leven exchange a look over the top of her head that certainly does not go unnoticed. “I know what you guys are thinking,” she says finally. “That it has something to do with Alex talking to that girl.”</p><p>“What girl?” Jackie asks innocently.</p><p>“Yeah, we definitely didn’t notice her or the fact that she looks exactly like you.”</p><p>“Shut up.” Isabelle looks up at Leven. “What is that supposed to mean?”</p><p>Leven grabs Isabelle’s arm, pulling her up so that she can see across the room. Alex stands out, and he shifts a step to his right as they are looking at him so they have a clear shot of Beauty &amp; Essex. “It means that she could be your twin. If I saw her from the back, I would definitely go up to her thinking she was you.” </p><p>Isabelle tilts her head, considering Leven’s words and momentarily forgetting why she is annoyed. Sure, there are some similarities, she thinks. They are around the same height with the same long dark hair, but that’s about where the comparison stops. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she says, turning back to Leven.</p><p>“Then why are you so cranky all of a sudden?”</p><p>Isabelle sighs heavily. “I don’t know.” She isn’t lying. Obviously it has something to do with Alex and this girl, but she can’t put her finger on what it is. Alex is her best friend; she should want him to be happy. Right? “I just am.”</p><p>“Okay, well, your drink is still at the table. I had to practically fight off the boys so that they didn’t drink it.”</p><p>“Perfect.” Isabelle leads them back to their table, sliding in between Mark and Jack. She can see Alex across the ballroom, talking to Beauty &amp; Essex, and she tries her best not to look over at them every ten seconds for fear of being too obvious. (Not that the guys would notice anyways.) </p><p>Alex doesn’t come back to their table for another forty-five minutes, not until dinner has already started. By the time he does, kicking Mark out of his chair so that he can sit next to Isabelle, she has passed the threshold for annoyed and is well into pissed off. “Where were you?” she asks Alex shortly as he plops down next to her, adjusting his tie and leaving Mark to grumble his way to the other side of the table.</p><p>“Mingling, Isabelle,” he says, flashing her a smile. At least he seems more sober than he did earlier, although the fact that he was too caught up talking to a girl to drink does not cheer Isabelle up any. “I had to since you just left me.”</p><p>“You didn’t seem like you minded it all that much.”</p><p>“Oh, don’t be like that.” He sticks his bottom lip out at her, resting his arm on the back of her chair and leaning close to her so that she can hear him over the din of the ballroom, even when he lowers his voice. “You’ll always be my favorite girl.”</p><p>So she lets it go, or at least she tries to, and the rest of the night isn’t so bad. They eat, they drink, they dance, and Isabelle doesn’t see that girl again. She didn’t even realize, until now, that she was still in the picture, although lately it seems like he has more girls hanging around than ever. He doesn’t ever mention them to Isabelle, but sometimes she’ll see his phone light up with a text and he’ll turn away from her when he answers it.</p><p>“Oh, you’re still talking to her?” Isabelle asks, fiddling with the edge of the blanket. She still has no clue why the idea of it bothers her so much, just knows that she doesn’t want to lose Alex.</p><p>Alex shrugs, checking his phone before putting it facedown on the arm of the couch. “Here and there. We haven’t been out or anything. I just mentioned the party to her, and she said she would stop by.” He notices the look on Isabelle’s face; apparently she is not doing a great job at hiding it. “What’s your deal with her anyways?”</p><p>“What deal? I don’t have a deal.”</p><p>“Sure you do,” Alex says infuriatingly, that little smirk on his face that he always gets when he thinks he knows more than Isabelle. “I just don’t know what it is.” She just raises her eyebrows at him. “Don’t you worry, I’ll figure it out.” Not likely, since she doesn’t even know what her deal is.</p><p>It feels like a pit has opened up in Isabelle’s stomach at the thought of Beauty &amp; Essex being there. (She has to make sure she calls her Lauren to her face if they end up having a conversation, no matter how drunk she might be.) Thankfully, Jackie and Leven are the first ones there, breezing through the door with a few bottles, some wine coolers, and a mountain of food, dumping it all on the counter and letting Alex deal with it as he mutters under his breath. (“Y’all never trust me to make the party. Just because I forgot booze that one time.”)</p><p>But when Leven asks her if she is okay, she just nods. She really doesn’t want to get into it. She knows exactly what her two best friends will say: that she is worried about losing Alex but there is nothing to worry about because there is no way he will abandon her, even when he does get a girlfriend. Intellectually, she knows that; emotionally, it is another story.</p><p>People filter in, coming in ones and twos and then groups, until Alex’s apartment is packed full, the music is blaring, and everyone is dancing. Alex really does know how to throw a party. When Isabelle looks around, she sees a lot of people she knows and even more she doesn’t. Mark is doing shots with the girls who live at the end of the hall; Dayo is in the corner talking to Alex’s sister Natalie (she will have to tip Alex off about that later); and Alex himself is nowhere to be found, even though he was right next to her a second ago.</p><p>She finds him in the kitchen with Jack and Josh, seeing how many marshmallows they can fit in their mouth like they aren’t all in their thirties. “C’mon, Fuhrman,” Mark says with his mouth full, holding out a handful of marshmallows. “I bet I can beat you.”</p><p>“I’m not taking that bet,” Isabelle says, laughing as she hops up onto the counter. Alex brushes his hand across her knee as he shoves another marshmallow into his mouth. “You have the biggest mouth of anyone I know.”</p><p>“Hey!”</p><p>Before long, Alex admits defeat, spitting a mouthful of marshmallow into the garbage can underneath the sink, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and then trying to wipe his hand on Isabelle’s pants. “Absolutely not,” she says, grabbing his wrist at the last second. “That is disgusting.”</p><p>He just laughs, grabbing her around the neck with his other arm and kissing her on the top of her head. Alex is a cuddly person to begin with, but even more so when he is drunk. Judging by the fact that he does not let go of her, he is probably about three beers and a couple of shots in. “Lighten up, Iz. It’s Christmas!”</p><p>About an hour later, he drags her into his room to give her her Christmas present. Alex is better at giving presents than anyone else she knows; every time he travels somewhere, he brings her something back, and he never forgets her birthday. “Wait, let me go first,” Isabelle says. She stashed Alex’s present in her when he was setting up, and she tells him to turn around, reaching down to grab the box out from under her bed.</p><p>It is heavy, and Alex sits down on the edge of his bed as he opens it, tapping the comforter next to him. “Shut up, Iz,” he says, as he tears off the paper and sees the image on the box. “Shut up, no you did not.”</p><p>“Do you like it?” She leans forward, taking the paper from him so that he can open the box. For weeks, Isabelle agonized over what to get him. She considered a dozen different things, but then La Creuset announced their Star Wars collaboration, and when Isabelle saw the Darth Vader dutch oven, she knew that she had found what she was looking for. It was expensive as hell, but it is totally worth it to see the look on Alex’s face now.</p><p>He holds onto it carefully, leaning forward to grab something out of the back pocket of his jeans. “Well, mine is nowhere near this good.”</p><p>“I highly doubt that. Gimme.”</p><p>He hands her a piece of printer paper, folded up small. As she unfolds it, he leans over her, resting his chin on her shoulder, his breath warm against her neck. She recognizes the picture printed on the paper right away: it is the antique baking cabinet on Ebay that she’s had bookmarked on her phone since the listing went up a couple of weeks ago. </p><p>“I know how much you wanted it,” Alex says, pulling back as she looks at him. “I’ll help you move it in. I was thinking it could go in the corner by the table.”</p><p>“Oh my God, Alex, I can’t accept this. It’s way too much.”</p><p>“And this isn’t?” He is still holding the dutch oven carefully, cradled in his lap, and he turns around it to set it down on the bed gingerly. “I love it, Iz. Thank you.” He hugs her hard, and they sit like that for a little while until the door bangs open and the noise from the party fills the room. It is Jackie, her cheeks flushed red, an empty shot glass in her hand, and some tinsel from Alex’s tree slung around her neck.</p><p>“Oh, sorry,” she says, her words a little slurred. “Alex, Beauty &amp; Essex is here. She’s looking for you.”</p><p>“Okay,” Alex says, glancing at Isabelle. “Thanks, Jackie. I’ll be right out.” Jackie shuts the door behind her, the noise from outside suddenly muffled again. Isabelle is suddenly very aware that it is just the two of them in Alex’s room, that there is a girl waiting for him outside. </p><p>“You should go,” she says quickly, standing up. “Get back to the party.”</p><p>“Isabelle…”</p><p>“Thank you for the present, Alex,” she says, her hand already on the doorknob. “Seriously. It’s perfect.” She is out the door before he can say anything else. She spends the rest of the night in the living room with Jackie and Leven, playing drinking games with Natalie and some of Alex’s friends from the gym, trying her best to avoid the kitchen where Alex is with Beauty &amp; Essex. </p><p>It is no surprise that she gets way too drunk and ends up falling asleep in Alex’s bed. She doesn’t remember the rest of the night, doesn’t remember that Alex is the one who deposits her there after Jackie comes to get him when Isabelle is throwing up in his bathroom. She certainly doesn’t remember that he is the one who tucks her in, leaves water and Advil on his nightstand for her, touches her forehead lightly before letting himself out of the room to go sleep on the couch alone after everyone has left.</p><p>All she remembers is the Christmas lights that she strung up around the edge of his room, blinking at her cheerfully as she drifts off to sleep, her dreams full of snow and Star Wars and Alex.</p><p>
  <span>🍯💛</span>
</p><p>
  <b>TypoLike </b>
  <span>Mark: The best flavor of all time is- Isabelle: Pistachio. Mark: ANGRILY HURLS SPOON ACROSS THE KITCHEN</span>
</p><p>
  <b>N L </b>
  <span>Whoever made the packaging labels did a great job! They are so cute. </span>
</p><p>
  <b>Princess Honey </b>
  <span>Alternate title: Isabelle Finally Has A Nice Week</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. she don’t feel the same about us in her bones</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>she told me in the morning she don’t feel the same about us in her bones<br/>it seems to me that when i die these words will be written on my stone<br/>/ story of my life by one direction</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It is Alex’s worst nightmare that he is being forced against his will to once again make bread. Technically, it is doughnuts (as Isabelle keeps fucking reminding him), but they are making the doughnuts with sourdough starter so the margin of error is still the same, if not worse. He feels like he has already proven that he does not mix well with sourdough, which is probably precisely why Dayo is doing this to him again.</p><p>He is in a bad mood the second he wakes up this morning and not just because of the doughnuts. The holidays came and went too quickly for his liking, and he feels like he is still hungover from the giant party that Jackie had on New Year’s Eve, even though it was last weekend. While Alex is always in charge of the Christmas party, Jackie took over New Year’s Eve a couple of years ago when her parents retired to Florida and left her their giant brownstone on the Upper West Side.</p><p>When he walks into her place that night, it is already full of people. He is a little bit late (okay, a lot), which is out of character for him, but he is on FaceTime with his youngest sister while he is getting ready to go and loses track of time completely. Then it starts snowing and it takes forever for him to get an Uber. By the time he gets to the party, it is nine o’clock, and everyone else has been drinking for at least a couple of hours. </p><p>Everyone from the office is there. Amandla and Leven are beer pong partners, and they are playing against Liam and Mark (who honestly have no chance; Leven is some sort of beer pong prodigy). Jackie is on the couch with Jack, sitting a little closer together than they probably would be if they were sober. Josh, Jen, and Willow are sitting around the coffee table, playing cards. There are tons of other people weaving in between them, getting drinks from the bar set up on the counter or taking a smoke break out on the patio. He sees a bunch of other people from work, Jackie’s friends from school, even some of her high school friends. But the one person he scans the crowd for seems to be missing in action.</p><p>“Alex!” Jackie jumps up, barely managing not to slop champagne down the front of her dress. “You’re here!” She makes her way around the coffee table a little unsteadily, throwing her arms around him when he reaches her, and he is thankful that she left her champagne glass with Jack. </p><p>“Finally. So sorry I’m late, Emerson.” He is sorry, but he can also bet that Jackie didn’t even notice, as preoccupied as she is with the party and, for some reason, Jack. “Is Iz here?”</p><p>“Uh, somewhere,” Jackie says, turning around to look around the room. “I swear I just saw her a second ago.”</p><p>“Don’t worry about it,” Alex says quickly, shrugging off his coat. “I’ll find her.”</p><p>Jackie points him in the direction of the bar; he wants to go find Isabelle, so he doesn’t bother making himself anything complicated, just grabs a bottle of Corona and goes to dump his jacket in Jackie’s room. He has been here so many times that he could find his way there and back with his eyes closed, which it feels like they are because it is so dark upstairs. </p><p>He doesn’t bother turning the light, throwing his coat on Jackie’s bed and turning to leave when something catches his eye. It is Isabelle out on the balcony outside Jackie’s room, the light glowing at the end of her cigarette bright in the darkness.</p><p>“That’s really bad for you, you know,” he says, easing the door open so that he doesn’t scare her. She is the most easily scared person he has ever met. Sure enough, she whips around, pulling her jacket more tightly around herself.</p><p>“Jesus, Alex. You scared the shit out of me.”</p><p>“Sorry.” He lets himself out onto the balcony with her, closing the door behind him with a soft click, and he grabs the cigarette out of her hand, taking a quick drag off of it before giving it back to her. He gave up smoking in culinary school after realizing it was turning his palate to shit, but every once in a while he’ll have one. (Usually when Isabelle is; the fact that she smokes now and then is just one of the hundreds of little things he has learned about her over the years. If she is smoking, it is because she is stressed, upset, or both.) “What’s wrong?”</p><p>“Nothing.” She taps some ash off on the railing, watching it fall to the patio below, barely missing Mark’s head. He must have stepped outside to get some air, or maybe he is pouting because Leven so thoroughly beat him at beer pong. “Just needed a break.”</p><p>“Isabelle.”</p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p>“I was born on a day, but that day was not yesterday. Come on. Out with it.”</p><p>She sighs heavily, finishing off the cigarette and putting it out in a little clump of snow next to her wrist. She leans forward on the balcony, looking up at the sky and avoiding Alex’s gaze. “Same old. You don’t want to hear about it.”</p><p>“You know that’s not true.”</p><p>Isabelle has been weirdly quiet since Alex’s Christmas party. Normally they text each other every single day, but a couple days went by where Alex didn’t hear from her. He figured it was because of the holidays; he was extra busy with his siblings in town, and he knew that she was going to be with Nicky’s family. But seeing her tonight makes it extra clear to Alex that there is something else going on.</p><p>“It’s just… Stuff with Nicky. He was supposed to come tonight. And he didn’t. Surprise. Same old.”</p><p>Alex could kill him where he stood just seeing the look on Isabelle’s face. Although that would be made harder by the fact that the motherfucker never shows up for her.</p><p>“I’m sorry.” He leans down next to her, brushing her arm with his. “I know that doesn’t make it better, but it’s true.”</p><p>She snorts. “No, it’s not. You hate him.”</p><p>“I do not!”</p><p>“Well, you don’t like him.”</p><p>“I don’t like seeing you like this,” Alex says matter-of-factly, just as it starts to snow again. Isabelle looks up, the flakes bright against her dark hair before melting away. One catches in her eyelash and Alex reaches out to brush it away. “You should be downstairs having fun, not up here pouting and trying to act like you don’t smoke.”</p><p>“Don’t say it like that.” She smirks at him, resting her chin in her hands. “You make it sound like this is a habit.” He just raises one eyebrow at her, laughing when she hits his arm. </p><p>Alex puts his arm around Isabelle’s shoulders, pulling her towards him. “Everything is gonna be fine, Iz,” he says into her hair, which smells like lemons and lavender. “You wanna go drink it off?”</p><p>“More than anything.”</p><p>She turns to go back inside, and Alex suddenly realizes how cold he actually is. His coat is inside on Jackie’s bed, and he puts his hand on Isabelle’s back, pushing her forward. “C’mon, Iz. I’m an icicle.”</p><p>“It’s locked, Alex,” she says through gritted teeth, trying the door handle again which is clearly not turning. “Did you close it all the way?”</p><p>He pauses, biting his lip. “Yes?”</p><p>“Alex!”</p><p>“I’m sorry, I didn’t know that if I shut it we would suddenly be in a Bear Grylls survivalist situation. Seriously, Iz, I’m fucking freezing.”</p><p>Isabelle starts giggling uncontrollably, turning around like suddenly someone is going to materialize on the balcony and save them. “Mark!” Alex screams over the balcony, leaning over as Isabelle grabs his arm. “Marcus!”</p><p>He looks up, squinting and holding his hand over his eyes to shield them from snowflakes. “Alex?”</p><p>“Come get us!” Isabelle yells down. “We’re locked out!”</p><p>They don’t hear the end of it for the rest of the night, but thankfully Mark comes and gets them right away, not even bothering to try to hide the fact that he is laughing at them. Isabelle drags him downstairs, settling him in front of the fire and bringing him a Fireball shot, telling him that it will warm him up right away. It does, so he figures he might as well have a few more, until he has to take off his sweatshirt because he feels like he is going to burst into flames. </p><p>In the back of his mind, Alex knows that he is drinking too much and that he should have some food or at least a glass of water. Isabelle is right there with him, getting stumbly, her hair coming down and her words soft and syrupy. He sits on the couch with Mark and watches her play beer pong, getting her ass thoroughly kicked by Leven who has been the reigning champ all night, a beer cradled between his knees.</p><p>When she loses for the second time and taps out, sitting down on his lap, she smells warm. Alex  can’t explain what that means in his current state of mind, but it is like honey and cinnamon and cloves and maple, like all the best parts about winter. She hooks one arm around his neck, grabbing his beer with the other hand, her fingers warm as they brush over his. </p><p>“No way,” he says, shifting so that he can hold his drink out of her reach. “You’re cut off.” </p><p>She pouts at him, but it won’t work. He knows from experience that her hangover is going to be even worse the next morning if she keeps mixing her alcohol; she really cannot handle it. “Fine,” she says, standing up and holding out her hand to pull him up. “Then come get some water with me.”</p><p>“It’s almost midnight!” Mark screeches after them, but Alex just shrugs, glancing over his shoulder at Mark as Isabelle leads him away. It’s not like he has anyone to kiss; he would much rather be ringing in the new year with his best friend than some random girl anyways. </p><p>He thought about asking Lauren to come tonight. They have been talking a little bit more than usual since Alex’s Christmas party, and if Alex is being honest with himself, he would have to admit he almost slept with her that night. He completely lost track of Isabelle that night after Lauren got there, and he ended up kissing Lauren in the kitchen at the end of the night. It wasn’t earth-shattering, but it was nice and easy and comfortable. He was just starting to think about asking her if she wanted to stay when he heard Jackie’s raised voice from the other room.</p><p>“Hey!” she said when she saw him coming towards her. “I was just looking for you. Isabelle is tossing her cookies in your bathroom.”</p><p>“I’ll take care of it,” Alex said quickly, immediately forgetting about Lauren and heading to his bathroom, where Isabelle was sitting with her back against his tub, looking a little worse for wear. </p><p>“I’m sorry,” she said as soon as she saw him, and he knelt down next to her. Jackie appeared over his shoulder, water bottle in hand, disappearing after he took it from her. “I went a little too hard.”</p><p>“That’s okay, Iz,” he said, handing her the water and forcing her to drink. “Come on, let’s go to bed.”</p><p>“Both of us?”</p><p>He snorted. “You can sleep in my bed. I’ll stay on the couch.” He tucked her in, and she drifted off almost as soon as her head hit his pillow. He touched her forehead lightly before backing out of the room, turning the lights off behind him so that the room was only illuminated by the icicle lights draped across his ceiling. </p><p>Any thought he might have had about getting laid that night flew out of his head knowing Isabelle was asleep in his room, and he ended up sending Lauren out the door with everyone else when the party wrapped up, people stumbling downstairs and falling into Ubers. Lauren kissed him on the cheek before he left, and he passed out on the couch, surrounded by empty cups and plates and late night pizza boxes.</p><p>For some reason, he couldn’t bring himself to text her about tonight. It might have been fun to have her here, but he knows for a fact that he always has fun when he is with Isabelle, and the last thing he wants to do is make her uncomfortable. He remembers very well the look on Isabelle’s face when she met Lauren at the fundraiser. He knows that the girls call her Beauty &amp; Essex behind Alex’s back. He doesn’t mind; he’s not dating the girl. But it might just be easier to keep that part of his life separate for now.</p><p>Isabelle hops up onto Jackie’s kitchen counter, pushing aside Jackie’s notebook and a mugful of pens as Alex grabs a couple of water bottles from Jackie’s fridge. “Drink the whole thing,” he instructs her, unscrewing the cap on his own. As he does so, he glances at his watch. Mark was right; it is five minutes until midnight. </p><p>“So,” he says after he takes a big drink. “What is your resolution going to be?”</p><p>Both Alex and Isabelle are big believers in New Year’s resolutions. They certainly do not subscribe to the notion that many of their friends do that you don’t need a new year to decide to do something. Technically, they are right, but Alex really loves the beginning of things, likes feeling like he has a fresh start even if it doesn’t. </p><p>“To finish the book,” Isabelle says quickly. “To throw less fits during Bitch Kitchen.” She puts her water bottle down, looking Alex in the eye. “I just want to be happy. You know? Whatever that might mean.”</p><p>“Yeah.” It is just the two of them in the kitchen, everyone else gathered around the television in the living room to watch the ball drop, and even though everyone is being loud, it almost seems muffled, like it is just the two of them. “Same.”</p><p>He can hear all of their friends counting down from ten in the living room, knows that Leven is going to kiss everyone within arm’s reach of her and that Jackie will make them all toast with champagne, but there is nowhere else he would rather be than right here with his best friend. “I love you, Iz,” she whispers into his ear as she hugs him tightly, right as the clock hits midnight.</p><p>“I love you more,” he whispers back. “Always have, always will.”</p><p>“Isabelle?”</p><p>Isabelle pulls back quickly, dropping her arms from around Alex’s neck, and he takes a step back, looking towards the source of the voice coming from his right. “Oh my God!” Isabelle says, her voice rising an octave as she jumps down from the counter to go hug her boyfriend. “What are you doing here?”</p><p>“I managed to get away,” he says, glancing at Alex over Isabelle’s shoulder with an unreadable look on his face. “Wanted to surprise you.”</p><p>“Well, I’m surprised!”</p><p>It is always weird for Alex to see Isabelle with Nicky. He would not, in a hundred years, have picked this guy for her. He isn’t even really sure how they met, just knows that it had something to do with a night out that Isabelle had with Jackie and Leven and Amandla. He has tried to get the details out of Leven in the past, but she just rolls her eyes at him, asking why he can’t talk to Isabelle about it and to get out of her face. </p><p>“I’ll catch you later, Iz,” he says, nodding at Nicky before he slides past them to make his way over to the living room. Just before he turns the corner, he looks back at them to see Nicky leaning down to kiss her, a big smile on her face. Well, he thinks, she did say her New Year’s resolution was to be happy. If this is what does it for her, then so be it.</p><p>He ends up having another few too many shots, drunk texting Lauren, and having to be poured into an Uber by Jackie at the end of the night. He feels the after effects of it for days, unhelped by the fact that he has to go into work and test out Isabelle’s doughnut recipe so he can film a video the following week. One batch turns out perfectly; another is absolute shit, and he knows from sourdough that it doesn’t really matter how his test batches turn out because it could all go hell in a handbasket very quickly on the day of the shoot for no discernible reason whatsoever.</p><p>
  <b>Alex and Isabelle Make Doughnuts Part 1: The Beginning | Wild Card</b>
</p><p>His only saving grace is that Isabelle is back to help him out, although he has barely seen her since the New Year’s Eve party. She was out on vacation last week, leaving Alex to recipe test on his own. She looks different when she comes back, but Alex can’t put his finger exactly on how or why. He doesn’t have time to talk to her before the shoot starts because she is simultaneously shooting the Skittles episode of DIY Kitchen, and they are currently in front of the camera arguing about whether it is sourdoughnuts (Alex) or doughnuts with sourdough starter instead of yeast (take a wild guess).</p><p>Alex fed the starter last week when he was making one of his crap test batches, so it is already ready to go, and the only thing they have to do today is make the dough (although it is a big task). They fall back into a rhythm quickly, like Isabelle never left, and before long Alex is making fun of her for being the Kitchenaid on speed eight.</p><p>“Jesus, Isabelle,” he says, reaching across her to turn it down. “You can’t go from park to third like that.”</p><p>“I have no idea what that means and you know it.”</p><p>“You know, like when you’re driving a five speed?”</p><p>“I live in the city! I can barely drive an automatic.”</p><p>If anyone is more cranky than Alex, it is Isabelle. She had to be here at seven o’clock this morning to get the intro done for the Skittles shoot before they started filming for Wild Card, and apparently she already has reservations about the whole thing in general, even though she hasn’t started cooking yet. (Honestly Alex is a little too scared to ask her about it at this point. It is only Day One for her, and it looks like it is going to be a three-dayer at the very least.) </p><p>But he finds as the day goes on that his bad mood melts away. By lunchtime, he feels back to normal, like his headache is finally gone and he is no longer irritated for a reason that he cannot pinpoint or name. The dough is done and folded delicately into a Cambro; Alex will have to turn the dough again once every hour for the rest of the day. </p><p>Isabelle is working on Skittles for the rest of the day, so Alex will be on his own (or as on his own as he can be with her twenty feet away at her workstation). He goes into his office to do inventory, but he can hear the breakdown that is incoming in the kitchen. By the time his alarm goes off, reminding him that it is time for the first fold, he is downright scared to ask her to show him how to do it.</p><p>“Iz?” he says as softly as possible, poking his head out of his office, but she hears him right away, turning away from the stove where he can see some mixture of something that looks like it is quickly approaching hard crack stage. “Do you have a sec?”</p><p>“Of course.” She puts down her spatula, looking glad to walk away from what is in front of her. “What’s up?”</p><p>“Can you just show me how to do it once? And then I won’t bother you again for the rest of the day, I swear.”</p><p>“Don’t worry about it.” She follows him over to the window where the Cambro is sitting. It doesn’t look like it has risen at all, but it has only been sixty minutes so Alex is going to choose not to flip out about it now. “Okay,” she says, picking up the Cambro and bringing it over to the workstation where they have been filming. Jen is darting around, quickly clearing away Skittles-making equipment. Josh is set up and waiting for them. “I need a step stool or something.”</p><p>Alex quickly grabs her one, putting it down in front of the dough so that she can stand on it and look down into the Cambro. “Oh my God, what if you were actually this tall?”</p><p>Isabelle laughs, looking over at him. She can actually look him in the eye, and he doesn’t like it. “Is this what the kitchen looks like to you all the time?”</p><p>“What can I say? I’m gifted.”</p><p>“Okay, pay attention. I’m only going to show you this once.” She does something complicated, lifting the dough up gingerly, turning it ninety degrees, and folding it back into the Cambro. </p><p>“Okay,” he says, watching her carefully. “I got it.”</p><p>He does not, in fact, have it. Every single hour for the next four hours, he makes Isabelle stop whatever it is she is doing (mixing gelatin at the stove, stretching taffy, making fruit juice, having a breakdown) to come help him fold the dough.</p><p>To be fair, the first time he is supposed to be doing it on his own, he does try. He picks the dough up and tries to turn it ninety degrees, but he gets scared and puts it down immediately. (Isabelle is the one who always says that dough can smell fear.) He is about to pick it up again when he hears Isabelle say his name.</p><p>“Alex! What are you doing?”</p><p>She is at the stove, spatula in one hand, candy thermometer in the other. Josh is next to her, camera perched on his shoulder, and he swings around to see what Alex and Jack are doing. “I’m doing what you told me to!” </p><p>“No you are not!” She puts the spatula down, laughing and coming over to him. “Just let me do it.”</p><p>That is how the rest of the day goes, passing by in a flurry of conversations that quickly get off topic (“Name other actors named Tom.” “Oh, that handsome guy.” “No, Alex, not Tom Hardy.”) and misplaced optimism (“I’m a jar two-thirds full kind of guy, Isabelle.” “So… you’re missing the point, but you have a great attitude?”). By the time the clock hits five fifteen, the dough hasn’t risen at all, and Alex’s good attitude is quickly slipping away.</p><p>“I don’t understand why it’s not rising,” Isabelle says, leaning down to look into the Cambro. “We did everything the way we were supposed to.”</p><p>“Honestly…” Alex is leaning down next to her. “It’s whatever. I say we just let it chill overnight and see if it works out.”</p><p>“Deal.”</p><p>They go to put the dough in the refrigerator, Jack scaring the hell out of Isabelle by following her into the walk-in with the camera and accidentally surprising her when she turns around. She goes home, but Alex sits in his office after it gets dark, completely ignoring his paperwork and thinking about the stupid dough in the stupid walk-in.</p><p>Before he goes home, he decides to pinch off a piece and fry a tester, all of the lights in the test kitchen turned off except for the ones over his workstation and the stove. He ends up with a perfect doughnut, and he goes home feeling optimistic about what he is going to have to do tomorrow.</p><p>
  <b>Alex and Isabelle Make Doughnuts Part 2: The Disaster | Wild Card</b>
</p><p>The next day does its absolute best to thoroughly beat Alex’s jar two-thirds attitude right out of him, and the only good thing about it is that he gets to spend the whole day with Isabelle.</p><p>She, unfortunately, is uncharacteristically late to work, even for her, leaving Alex to fight a losing battle with ADHD in front of the camera by himself for forty-five minutes. At first, it isn’t so bad. He gets everything out that they might possibly need later on, piles the sugar and lemons and eggs and honey on the station behind him while singing an old Dunkin’ Donuts commercial over and over until Jack tells him to shut up. </p><p>Around minute fifteen, he tells his infamous story about the Rat King, a giant rat who lived in a castle made of doughnuts that fell behind the rack at a doughnut shop he worked at when he was sixteen. Jack has heard the story about a million times, but it is nine fifteen in the morning and Alex is barely awake as it is.</p><p>From minute twenty to minute thirty, Alex pulls a stool up to the workstation and drinks his coffee, scrolling through Instagram on his phone. “I guess this is what happens when you get twelve million views,” he says, glancing at the time. (Isabelle’s last video, Isabelle Makes Ramen, is currently the second most popular on the magazine’s youtube channel, sitting only behind the sourdough episode. Alex has been teasing Isabelle for weeks that nine of the top ten videos are hers.)</p><p>He texts her “Doughnuts??” at nine thirty, immediately receiving back the response “In the Oculus!” “Do you think that means she’s actually in the Oculus?” Jack asks.</p><p>“Oculus, my ass,” Alex says, not even bothering to try to hide his yawn. “She’s on the A train.”</p><p>Then he wanders around for five minutes, walking back and forth from the row of refrigerators that line two sides of the room. “I’m like a shark,” he tells Jack. “I gotta keep moving or I’ll die.” While wandering he finds a wooden dowel that someone left on the counter by his dehydrator, and he spends another ten minutes trying to spin it on the dowel, telling Jack to time him.</p><p>Finally Isabelle walks in at nine forty-five, tea in hand and sunglasses still on like someone who isn’t forty-five minutes late. “Back in the day before television we used to spin dowels,” Alex is saying to the camera, Willow barely keeping it together, when Jack pulls the camera away from his face, nodding to Isabelle over Alex’s shoulder. “Well look who it is!” Alex says, dropping the dowel to the counter with a clatter. </p><p>“Oh man,” she says, pushing her sunglasses up and taking her coat off, hanging it up next to the door. “Have you had a tough morning?”</p><p>“Iz, I’m exhausted! I’ve been dancing in front of this camera for forty-five minutes!”</p><p>She frowns, coming over to him. “Wait what? Why?”</p><p>“Our call time was at nine.”</p><p>“No, it was nine thirty.”</p><p>Isabelle looks to Willow, who wrinkles her nose. “It was nine.”</p><p>“Oh my God.” Isabelle’s eyes widen and she puts her tea down on the counter, slipping her apron over her head and tying it behind her. “Oh my God. I am so sorry, you guys. I was on time yesterday!”</p><p>“Well, that’s good for yesterday, Iz,” Alex says, but he puts his arm around her shoulder, hugging her quickly before dropping it so that she can explain what they are going to be doing today. </p><p>They spend the next thirty minutes rolling out the dough, cutting it into doughnut shapes, and settling them on a baking try so that they can sit for another hour. If there is one thing Alex has learned about baking, it is that there is a lot of sitting around. Honestly he doesn’t know how Isabelle stands it. </p><p>“Do you want to tell the Rat King story?” Isabelle asks brightly as she settles a clean towel over the baking sheet, setting it by the window to proof.</p><p>“Oh, Isabelle,” Alex says as Jack bursts out laughing. “If only you knew what I went through this morning.”</p><p>“Alex, I am sorry! To make it up to you, I’ll make you maple glaze. How’s that?”</p><p>He nods, grinning at her. “It’s a start.”</p><p>While the doughnuts are proofing again, they argue about the best toppings (Isabelle loves chocolate and sprinkles; Alex much prefers plain, although he did put prime rib on his tester doughnut last night for dinner and it was fucking delicious). Finally, they just decide to make everything: maple, cinnamon, chocolate for Isabelle, and (of course) honey. </p><p>It takes them about an hour to get all of the toppings done, by which time the doughnuts should be more than ready to fry. The only problem is that they aren’t. “What the hell?” Isabelle mutters to herself, leaning over the tray. They have hitched up the towel so that Isabelle can do the poke test. They should be done since they have sat for an hour, but the doughnuts are springing back when Isabelle touches them instead of staying indented. “These should be ready.”</p><p>“I say we fry a tester anyways.”</p><p>“Even though they aren’t done?”</p><p>“Hey.” Alex shrugs at her. “It’ll be like a control group thing.”</p><p>“Jar two-thirds full is right,” Isabelle says, sighing and turning on a burner as Alex pours oil into a big pan. She is quiet as it heats up, and Alex knows that in her head she is thinking about all of the things that have gone wrong so far this morning. </p><p>They put the doughnuts on individual squares of parchment paper so that it is easy to pick them up and slip them into the fry oil. Immediately, the doughnut sinks to the bottom of the pan before bobbing back up. “Not ready,” Isabelle says. “There’s not enough air in them yet.”</p><p>“So now what?” Alex asks, staring at the sad little doughnut bobbing around in the fry oil. “I say we just let them sit until after lunch.”</p><p>“You’re right,” Isabelle says, and Alex beams at her. She sticks her tongue out at him; it is so rare for her to actually say those words that he has to savor the moment whenever it comes. “I have to work on Skittles anyways, and you’ve got that lunch meeting, right?”</p><p>‘Ugh.” Alex sighs. “Yes.”</p><p>“Cheer up.” Isabelle pats him on the arm. “At least you won’t be down here trying to pull taffy.”</p><p>When he gets back that is exactly what she is doing: her and Mark each have hold on an end of what looks like very stringy colorless taffy and are pulling very hard. “So…” Alex says, walking up behind them. Isabelle is laughing hysterically, and Mark is failing at keeping a straight face. “This is how they make Skittles, huh?”</p><p>Isabelle is looking up at him. “It’s… not going so well.”</p><p>“You don’t say.”</p><p>Alex waits for Isabelle to fold the mixture into a loaf pan and put it in the fridge while Josh packs up the cameras, telling Alex that they definitely broke Isabelle while he was gone and it might be a tough afternoon. “Can’t be any tougher than this morning,” Alex says. He was thinking about the stupid doughnuts the entire time he was in Dayo’s office, and he can’t think of where they went wrong, which means that he has absolutely no idea how to fix it. Even worse, it doesn’t seem like Isabelle knows either, which probably means that whatever it is is probably unfixable.</p><p>He is wrong. They test the doughnuts again, and they still spring right back. When they fry another tester, it goes about as poorly as the first one.</p><p>“Let’s at least cut it open,” Isabelle suggests, taking it over to the workstation and setting it down. “Maybe we can see where we fucked up.” When they cut it open, they realize it looks even more like crap than they originally thought: there is an awful fry line, the crumb is all wrong, and it is so dense Alex feels like it could sink a ship.</p><p>He spikes it into the ground while Isabelle explains all of this to the camera. Behind the camera, Jack snorts. “I need a break,” Isabelle says. She goes to fill up her water jar as Alex tells Jack that the tester he fried yesterday turned out perfectly.</p><p>“Do you want to see?”</p><p>“Yes please,” Jack says. Alex pulls his phone out, clicking on the picture he took yesterday. The doughnut looks perfect, which makes absolutely no sense since it is from the same batch of dough they have been fucking around with all day.</p><p>“Let me see,” Isabelle says, popping up at his elbow with a full jar of water. “Oh, Alex, it’s perfect.”</p><p>“I know!”</p><p>He throws his phone down on the counter with a clatter, putting his head in his hands. They take a few minutes to silently pout about how absolute shit today turned out, but they are broken out of their silence by the sound of Alex’s phone dinging with a text (he forgets to turn it on silent for every single shoot; he thinks Jack might kill him if it keeps going off). </p><p>It is from Lauren, he sees as he leans over the counter to look at the screen, and he is very aware of the fact that Isabelle is right next to him looking over his shoulder. “Remember her?” he asks lamely.</p><p>“Yeah.” Isabelle picks up her water. “She text you a lot?” </p><p>“Eh. Sometimes.” He puts his hand over his mic right as Isabelle takes a big sip of water, leaning towards her and turning his back to the camera as he says, “You know nothing has happened, Iz. I would’ve told you if it had.” He doesn’t realize his mistake until he is done speaking and sees the mic clipped to her collar. “Oh, goddammit, hers is still on!”</p><p>Isabelle leans over the counter, spitting water back into her jar and giggling. “We are a mess today,” she says, but it is good-natured and Alex is relieved she’s not going to rip him a new one for keeping secrets from her. (She still might, but he will deal with that if it comes.) </p><p>A little while later, they decide to try again at four thirty, only to be informed that Jack has a flight out of JFK at five and should probably already be on his way there. Furthermore, he is going to be in Los Angeles visiting his family for two weeks, and they can’t do any more work on sourdoughnuts until he is back.</p><p>“Well,” Alex says, a little gloomily. “That’s probably best. Seeing as how this is never going to work.”</p><p>“Don’t worry, Alex,” Isabelle says. “Just let me think on it. I’ll figure it out.”</p><p>
  <b>Alex and Isabelle Make Doughnuts Part 3: Redemption | Wild Card</b>
</p><p>“Iz, I wanted to pick your brain about the South of France,” Alex says when Jack is back and they are resuming their sourdoughnut journey. “You been?”</p><p>“Yes, Alex,” she says, her tone more amused than anything. “We have talked about this like eight times.”</p><p>That might be true. Alex is trying to figure out where he wants to go for his birthday in a few months. Every year, he (and one of his siblings, whoever can fit it into their work schedule) take off for a week or two, to Hawaii or Yellowstone or New Orleans. Sometimes he can even turn it into a string of Wild Card episodes, like he did when he went to Colombia. He figures he might be able to talk Dayo into letting him go to France or Italy this year.</p><p>Alex spent all of yesterday remaking their dough, changing nothing except for the way they are proofing it. After consulting with Isabelle, he learns that she thinks the reason everything went a bit askew was because they were only covering the doughnuts with towels during the first proof. (That’s what they get for trying to cut down on their single-use plastic intake apparently.) So he uses Saran Wrap this time, hoping that that makes a difference because if this fails him today he may not recover.</p><p>Isabelle explains this change to the camera, saying that the disaster doughnuts had looked, upon being cut open, far too dry on the outside while somehow overproofed on the inside. “It is the only thing I can think of,” she says. “So I think this should work.”</p><p>Before too long, the fry oil is bubbling on the stove, and Alex is repeating the steps he took last week, picking up each doughnut on its single square of parchment paper and gently shaking it off into the oil. Immediately, he knows that this will work this time because the doughnuts bob gently on the surface of the oil instead of heading straight for the bottom of the pan like bricks. “Oh, thank God,” he says. “Last time they were sinking to the bottom.”</p><p>“We all were, to be honest,” Isabelle says, and he laughs. </p><p>They trade off frying the doughnuts and covering them in toppings when they are done. Alex dips one in chocolate glaze, adding sprinkles just for Isabelle. In turn, she makes him one with honey, thinned out with a little bit of apple cider vinegar so it isn’t as sweet, just how he likes it. They have cinnamon sugar, espresso and cocoa powder, maple syrup, and before long their cooling racks are completely covered in doughnuts.</p><p>Before they can even carry them back over to the counter, Mark comes over, popping up between the two of them and scaring the hell out of Alex. He grabs a doughnut, taking it back to his station even as Alex is telling him that he is going to burn the shit out of his tongue. He is right, but Mark doesn’t much care. “I’ve been waiting two weeks for this, goddammit.”</p><p>They cut one open to look inside (it is perfect, by the way), but the episode is quickly dissolving into the usual chaos of chefs hearing that something new has been made and filtering over to their station to try it. They pass out doughnuts like they own a doughnut shop (Isabelle tells Alex that he is the real Rat King now, and he pushes her sideways gently) until they are all gone. (But certainly not before they took pictures and Jack got the shots he wanted. Alex is going to need documentation that he did not screw this up.)</p><p>Eventually, Isabelle gets distracted by something that Jackie is cooking on the far side of the kitchen, and she wanders off. The episode is pretty well wrapped up by now (it is actually going to be three videos, Jack told him this morning), and Alex goes back to his office to sit down and take a deep breath. At least this one is behind him, and at least he feels pretty damn good about the final outcome, even if it was like walking on hot coals to get there.</p><p>Before too long, Isabelle lets herself in, shutting the door behind her and sitting down across from him. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”</p><p>“Okay, shoot,” he says. </p><p>She takes a deep breath, like she is about to jump off a cliff or something, before putting her hand in the pocket of her sweatshirt and pulling something out. Alex looks down at the diamond ring sitting in her outstretched palm, glinting up at him under the sunlight streaming in through his office windows. For a moment, he understands the cliche about your blood running cold in your veins. “For me?” he manages to say, but he doesn’t even hear himself, the blood rushing in his ears so loudly that it’s almost like they are standing outside on the street with cars and taxis and people whizzing by.</p><p>She gives him a little half smile, looking at him with her head tilted, like she is studying him carefully. “I, um…” She takes another deep breath, slipping the ring on. “I’m engaged.”</p><p>“You’re…” Something clicks in his head; he realizes that he should get up, should hug her, should be excited. “You’re engaged, oh my God, Isabelle. That’s great!” </p><p>“Yeah?” she asks, hope hanging heavily beneath the word.</p><p>“Of course!” He pushes himself to his feet, a little shakily since it doesn’t seem like he has much control over his legs right now, and he goes around the desk, pulling her up to hug her. “Congratulations, Isabelle.”</p><p>They sit in his office for a while until the sun starts to set, the door closed, so that Isabelle can tell him about how it happened, when it happened, what her parents said. Alex tries to listen, he really does, but it seems like he can barely focus on the words coming out of her mouth, even as she says them.</p><p>He is happy for her. Of course he is. But he can’t help feeling like this day, which had been so great, has left a sour taste in his mouth that he just won’t be able to get rid of.</p><p>
  <span>🍯💛</span>
</p><p>
  <b>Juan Thomas </b>
  <span>Isabelle and Alex’s videos are the most chaotic messes ever to be made in the history of cooking shows, and I beg you not to stop making them.</span>
</p><p>
  <b>Payton Shaw </b>
  <span>Alex going insane for 45 minutes and Isabelle walking in with coffee are my last two brain cells trying to get anything done</span>
</p><p>
  <b>Molly B </b>
  <span>The Rat King story gives me big “camp counselor trying to kill time in an entertaining way because it’s storming and we can’t go swimming” vibes</span>
</p><p>
  <b>Jolly </b>
  <span>The fact that she knew the Rat King story and knew he would want to tell it in the context of making doughnuts, I’m fine???</span>
</p><p>
  <b>Joe Jergan </b>
  <span>How is no one talking about the juiciest part of the episode??? Alex gets a text. Alex awkwardly asks Isabelle hey remember her? Isabelle: Yeah… she text you a lot? Alex: Sometimes. Alex tries to cover his mic and has both his mouth and the audio censored while whispering something to Isabelle. For the love of God I want the gossip.</span>
</p><p>
  <b>Huda </b>
  <span>I basically just watched a feature length film about two people trying to make doughnuts.</span>
</p><p>
  <b>Ravi </b>
  <span>Alexander doing DIY Kitchen and Isabelle doing Wild Card for just one episode would be the bomb.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. the dreams i’d die for are now killing me</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>and i keep running circles trying to understand why the dreams i’d die for are now killing me<br/>and i keep running circles trying to figure out why this life is not what i thought it’d be<br/>i wanna go back to the sweet beginnings<br/>when i was young and full of innocence<br/>i wanna go back to complete surrender of you<br/>/ sweet beginnings by bebe rexha</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Something is wrong with Alex. Isabelle is sure of it, although she can’t put her finger on what it is. He’s just not… Alex, not the one she knows anyways. In the month since she has told him that she got engaged, he has been different. He still texts her every day, they still joke around at the office, they have met up a couple of times for brunch or drinks, but there is an energy around him that she couldn’t put words to even if she tried.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She is more terrified to tell him about the engagement than anyone else. Her parents took it exactly how she expected, stoically, the same way they reacted when she told them that she was not actually going to use the Harvard education that they shelled out a cool two hundred grand for and was instead going to go to culinary school. Her sister was a bit more dramatic, but Madeline is dramatic about everything, so it wasn’t much of a surprise.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But Alex… Alex is the wild card. He has never liked Nicky, not from the jump, and Isabelle doesn’t know why. She has never straight up asked him about it, the same way that he has never specifically asked her about Lauren or Kristy or Lindsey or any of the other names she sees pop up on his phone sometimes when he thinks she’s not looking. (She’s always looking. She can’t help herself.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So when she sits down in his office after they finally have sourdough doughnut success (Alex so badly wants her to call them sourdoughnuts but she cannot bring herself to do it), she is nervous as hell, shaking her leg underneath the table in an attempt to stymie her nerves a little. It doesn’t work.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It just happened last weekend, only four days ago, but keeping a secret like this from Alex for four whole days has been a nightmare and a half. She hasn’t been wearing her ring at work, telling Nicky it is because she doesn’t want a few million people to know she is engaged before she has a chance to tell everyone in person. (By everyone, she means Alex. They both know that.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He did it at the restaurant on the rooftop of his incredibly bougie, incredibly expensive apartment building. There were lots of people around, the massive amounts of champagne she consumed combined with the heat being thrown out by the giant fireplaces (so tall she could stand up in them) scattered around the room making her feel like she was having a hot flash. And then they got to dessert and he was suddenly down on one knee in front of her and she was so shocked she could barely find the word “yes,” pulling it from some dark recess of her brain. The diamond looked giant on her finger when she put it on, kissing him amidst the claps of everyone else having dinner and staring at them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Is it bad that after the excitement fades and they are back in Nicky’s apartment her first thought is of telling Alex?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She is still mulling that thought over in her brain as he waits for her to tell him whatever it is she needs to tell him. He is sitting across from, twirling a pen between his fingers like he always does when he is a little anxious. Finally, she decides she just needs to say it, get it over with, but instead of forcing any words out she just takes the ring out of her pocket and holds it out in front of her so that Alex can see. There is certainly no mistaking what it is; it’s the size of Jupiter, for fuck’s sake. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>As she waits for Alex to respond (say something, anything), she realizes that she doesn’t really remember what it was that Nicky said to her that night. Her memory loss is not a product of the late hour or the people watching or even the champagne, but instead of shock. If you had asked her a few weeks before, she would have said that they weren’t doing that great, that Nicky works all the time and she is busy with her book and maybe they aren’t the same people they were when they fell in love. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But maybe they are. Maybe a lifetime of affection and stability and being comfortable is what she wants. (Sometimes, late at night when she tosses and turns in her bed and ends up going down to the street level to smoke, she thinks that this isn’t what she wants at all. Fuck comfortability and ease and what feels, deep down in her gut, like settling for the life she was supposed to have instead of the one that she dreams about. But then she goes back upstairs and falls asleep and everything looks a little bit different in the morning; she forgets what she was feeling until the next time she can’t sleep and ends up on an empty sidewalk with a cigarette between her teeth.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It seems like a hundred years before Alex says something, cracks a joke in his very Alex way about her proposing to him before getting up and hugging her hard. He says all the right things: congratulations, that he is happy for her, that this is great, but there is something behind his voice, a tightness that runs through his words and makes her think they might just snap like a rubber band. If she didn’t know him so well, she wouldn’t even notice it, but she does know him and she does notice it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She doesn’t want to leave him, doesn’t want to go home to her empty apartment, so they sit in his office for a long time until the sun starts to go down and the sky is a bright blaze orange that sears itself across the backs of her eyelids so that she sees it even when she closes her eyes. He asks her when it happened, how it happened, where they were, what she ate, what her parents said when she told them, and (more importantly) what Madeline’s reaction was. (Madeline has lived in Paris for a few years, but Alex has met her a few times when she comes back to the city. The two of them together terrorize Isabelle more than any sourdough doughnut or goddamn Skittle ever could.) </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The one thing he doesn’t ask her is how she’s feeling, and she’s relieved because she wouldn’t know how to answer that question and she certainly can’t lie to Alex. Not because she doesn’t want to (she would lie about this in a second), but because she literally can’t. He knows her too well. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It is Friday, which means that Nicky is able to swing a rare night off. He comes over to her apartment, which is rare for him even when they are able to see each other. He wants to talk about the wedding, about dates and guest lists and possible venues, and she tries to listen but instead she finds herself spinning her ring around on the kitchen table, watching the light hit it as it flashes by and eventually wobbles and falls.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She doesn’t know that Alex asks Lauren out on a date that night, that he quickly cleans his apartment because he knows that no matter what happens at dinner he will be bringing her home that night. She doesn’t know that he puts on a nice shirt and dress pants, takes extra time in front of the mirror to make sure his hair is exactly how he wants it before grabbing his keys, looking around his apartment, and switching off the light.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She doesn’t know that they have dinner at Beauty &amp; Essex, the lights dim around them and the dining room full of the low sounds of conversation so that Alex has to lean forward to hear what Lauren is saying. As Nicky is talking about open bars and whether Isabelle’s grandmother will fly in, Alex is unzipping Lauren’s dress, letting it fall to the floor of his room, mouthing gently over the skin of her neck and thinking that it tastes like flowers and perfume, nothing like honey and vanilla and all of the sweet things in the world.</span>
</p><p>
  <b>Blind Taste Test: Cheese Edition | Chef Showdown</b>
</p><p>
  <span>“You know that I am both lactose intolerant and a heavy smoker, right?” Isabelle hears Mark say while putting his blindfold on before she is unceremoniously shooed out of the kitchen by Willow.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You know you two can’t be in here,” she says sternly, or as sternly as someone like Willow can. (She may run the entire production team, but she is a full inch shorter than Isabelle who is already pretty vertically challenged to begin with.) </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, come on,” Alex whines. Willow is pulling him out of the kitchen by the front of his flannel. It is snowing so hard outside that when they pass by the windows, they can’t see more than a foot through the mass of swirling flakes. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That would be blatant cheating,” Willow says, pushing him past the door of his office even as he tries to go inside, a small squabble breaking out as he tries to hang onto the door frame. “Is that what you want everyone to think? That you’re cheaters?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, it’s better than them thinking my palate is crap,” Isabelle grumbles. “Besides, they could just edit that part out.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Today is Chef Showdown day; they are filming two or three videos where they all have to compete against each other in blind taste tests. Isabelle has been dreading it; she hates being bad at things, and this is certainly something that she is bad at. She has always been a bad test taker (and taste tester for that matter). Alex, conversely, does not much care; he is just throwing a fit because it is Mark’s turn on the block and she knows he wants to see how badly he does.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re going to be fine,” Willow says, finally getting Alex to the doors and shoving him unceremoniously into the stairwell. “Go upstairs, and don’t come back down unless Jen is escorting you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex sticks his tongue out at her as she closes the door firmly behind them, pulling his beanie down over his ears. “Well, that was a giant bummer,” Alex says, rolling his eyes as they start their hike up to the seventy-eighth floor. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re gonna be just fine, Alex,” Isabelle says grumpily. “You don’t smoke, you have a great palate, and you’re good at shit like this.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, thank you,” he says, throwing a grin back over his shoulder at her. “You wanna say more nice stuff about me?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” she says indignantly. He holds the door open for her when they get to the landing, letting her go ahead of him, and they both plop down in her little cubicle, papered with recipes and pictures and newspaper articles, the write up in the Times about Alex prominently featured (although of course she had to underline the part that mentions her). She spots a picture of her and Nicky in a frame right by Alex’s elbow, and she hopes that he doesn’t notice it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The view in Alex’s office is much better; she has a tiny little window that is half in Jackie’s cubicle next door, and she only gets a little sliver of the city. It doesn’t matter to her; she spends eighty-five percent of her time in the kitchen and the last fifteen percent in Alex’s office anyways. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It has been two weeks since Isabelle got engaged. They are well into February now (it’s almost Valentine’s Day, a fact that she is trying not to think about, as she has absolutely no plans to speak of, not something that she would have thought possible right after getting engaged), and it seems like her friendship with Alex is back to normal. Sure, he’s been a little distant, but so has she with her recipe testing and working on the book nonstop. She can’t complain.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Or at least that is what she is going to keep telling herself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So what do you want to do for your birthday?” Alex asks, opening the top drawer of Isabelle’s desk and pulling out a handful of Starbursts. He is the only person she knows who likes the yellow and orange ones over pink or red, and there are always extras in her desk for him on the off chance that he ventures upstairs to visit. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Isabelle’s birthday is at the end of February. Last year, she went out to dinner with Nicky and his parents, and he ended up having to leave early to go back to the office, leaving her alone with his family. The year before that, Alex threw her a huge surprise party with all of her friends from the office and even some from college that she hadn’t seen in years. She certainly isn’t expecting anything like that this year.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I haven’t really thought about it,” she says, grabbing a Starburst from her and unwrapping it. “I’ve just been so busy with the book and everything.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, you can’t just ignore it,” Alex says, rolling his eyes at her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If you keep doing that, you’re going to get a headache.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Twenty-nine is a big deal, Iz,” he says. “You’re about to hit thirty, and that’s when you really start to fall apart.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She throws her wrapper at him. “Well, we can do whatever. I don’t care.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fine. You don’t have to care. You know why?” He smiles brightly at her. “Because I care. So don’t think you’re going to get out of this without at least some acknowledgement about my favorite girl being born.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It is only another five minutes before Jen comes upstairs to find them. “Who wants to go first?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Me,” Alex says quickly. “I want to be able to see Iz go.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>While he is down in the kitchen, Isabelle scrolls through Instagram, looking at the pictures from her twenty-seventh birthday. He convinced her parents to let him use their house on the Cape and got her mom to tell her that they wanted her to visit for the weekend. When she got there, her parents were nowhere to be found, but Alex was with a giant grin on his face and about fifty of her friends. People danced and played pool and got incredibly drunk and ate a lot and passed out wherever there was a spare bit of bed, couch, or blanket under the pool table (Jack). </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Isabelle ended up out on the beach with Alex. The Cape is nothing like New York; you can see stars everywhere you look, so many that you can’t believe you don’t see them from your apartment in the city. They talked for a long time about everything and about nothing, blankets around them, Isabelle’s head on Alex’s shoulder, his arm around her to keep her warm. It was the best birthday she had ever had, and she is pretty sure it will stay that way for a very long time.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When it is finally her turn to go down to the test kitchen, Alex is sitting excitedly on a stool next to Willow behind the camera. He looks too excited, is practically rubbing his hands together. “Well…” she asks expectantly. “How did you do?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m not telling you that,” he says. “Absolutely not.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She sighs heavily as Alex slingshots her the blindfold, settling it over her eyes and pulling her hair out of the way. “Okay,” she says, flattening her hands on either side of the butcher block cutting board on the counter in front of her. “I’m ready.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It takes them a little while to set up. She can’t see a thing, just hears people coming in and out, setting something up. “Okay,” Willow says. “So today you are going to be tasting cheese.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Inwardly, Isabelle groans. She eats a lot of cheese but she doesn’t work with a lot of cheese; if there is anything weird in the bunch, she is screwed. Willow quickly explains that there are six pieces of cheese in front of her and she should start with the one on her right and work her way over. She is also instructed to explain her thought process as she goes; Isabelle can only imagine the stream of consciousness that must have come from Alex and Mark. “Okay,” Isabelle says, running her hand along the counter until she hits the edge of the cutting board, picking up a cheese cube. “Is this it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s it,” Willow says, and she can hear Alex snickering. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay,” she says, turning it over between her fingers. She sniffs it, not getting much from it before popping it into her mouth. “It’s too soft for parm,” she says through a mouthful of cheese. “And it has crystals so it must be aged.” Maybe this won’t be so bad. “I’m gonna say… cheddar.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay,” Willow says. “You can go to the next one.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re not gonna tell me if I got it right before I move on?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s what I said!” Alex blurts out, and she can only imagine the fight that he had with Willow in the middle of his taste test when he realized he was not going to get immediate feedback. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The second one is much milder than the first, a little bit nuttier and a lot firmer, and she says Gruyere, although she is not as sure about it as she was the first one. She is even less sure about the third one. It has absolutely no aroma and it’s so bland that she can’t discern any flavor at all. “I think it’s…” She pauses for a long time. "I have no idea. I’m going to say mozzarella. Like shitty mozzarella.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The fourth one is absolutely fucking disgusting. “It’s like… what’s that brand? The Cow That Laughed?” Alex snorts, but Mark screams from the other side of the room “I said the same thing! Laughing Cow!” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, exactly.” Isabelle doesn’t even eat the whole cube, putting the second half back on the cutting board. “That is… disgusting. I have no idea.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The fifth one tastes like nuts and apples, and she guesses goat gouda with confidence. The last one could be parm, but at the last second she changes her guess to piave, pulling off her blindfold and squinting against the bright lights of the kitchen. “Okay,” she says. “How many did I get right?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You got three out of six.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And what did Alex get?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“One.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ha!” She throws the remainder of the fourth cheese cube at him. “Suck it!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Good thing you’re not competitive, Iz,” he says, pouting and folding his arms across his chest. Alex might be all flexible and easygoing, but he hates losing just as much as Isabelle does. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So what were they?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex lists them in order: cheddar, comte, oaxaca, Velveeta (“That’s the only one I got.” “Are you fucking kidding me?” “Hey, I’m from Jersey!”), gouda, and piave, and by the time he gets done, Isabelle is triumphant. “Well, that wasn’t so bad.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You say that now,” Alex says darkly. “Who knows what they’re going to do to us next.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>In the end, Isabelle ties for first place with Amandla and Jackie. Leven comes in second with two correct answers, and Liam, Mark, and Alex bring up the rear. “I may not have my name in the New York Times, but I’m better at blindly guessing cheeses,” she says to Alex as they move some things around and get ready for the next video.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He elbows her in the ribs gently. “Oh it’s on, Fuhrman.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He kicks her ass at Blind Taste Test: International Snack Edition, but no one can touch her when it comes to ice cream, and she beats not only Alex, but everyone else too. By the time the day ends and they are all released to their evenings, she is the undisputed Taste Test Champion, a sentiment she did not think possible this morning. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do you want to go grab dinner?” Alex asks, checking his watch as he follows her up to her cubicle so that she can grab her jacket and her hat. It is still snowing outside, everything white and soft as it passes by the window, but she knows that the streets will be a giant, slushy, gray mess, and she changes into her boots. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sure,” she says, lacing them up as Alex stands over her, flipping through some of the mock up pages for her cookbook that are stacked in the corner, waiting for her notes. He pulls out her croquembouche recipe, looking intently at the drawing before putting it down. “Where do you want to go?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Industry Kitchen,” he says so quickly that she knows he had that answer loaded up and ready to go long before he asked her about dinner. “I want pizza.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That sounds perfect,” she says. “Walk or cab?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Let’s walk if you think you can handle it. It’ll probably be faster anyways.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If I can handle it? I’m the champion of today, Alex. Which means not only that I can handle it but also that you will be buying me dinner.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He laughs, following her out to the elevator, holding the door open for her and lightly brushing the small of her back as she passes through. It takes them about twenty minutes to walk from One World Trade to Industry Kitchen on the east side of Manhattan. It is slushy and messy in the streets, just like Isabelle knew it would be, but the snow is still coming down, muffling everything and making it seem a little bit softer. It’s not too cold, their breath coming out in little puffs, and as they walk Alex asks Isabelle about the cookbook, whether she needs help and how much longer she has to go.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I mean, no matter what, it’s being published next October,” she says. “I know how it’s going to be organized and stuff, but we are still making everything and getting pictures and I have to finalize some recipes.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s so great that you’re doing it, Iz,” he says as they pass by the plaza next to the Federal Reserve, steel sculptures rising up in blurry black shapes against the lights of the building behind them. “Now the rest of the world gets to know how smart you are too.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Shut up,” she says, hitting him lightly on the arm, and he laughs and pulls her closer. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Industry Kitchen is warm and bright and smells like pizza and wood smoke, the perfect combination for a dark February night. The restaurant looks out onto the East River, fairy lights strung up overhead and making it feel like it is still Christmas. They sit in a table right next to the window and argue over what to order, finally deciding on half mozzarella, prosciutto, and honey Sriracha and half crushed tomato, garlic, and shaved pecorino. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex has the worst menu envy (he always has, one of the dangers about going out to eat with him), and he comments on every plate that passes him, pointing out ossobuco and a pot of mussels and truffle tagliatelle. He is a chef through and through, and it is one of the things Isabelle loves most about him. They can sit and talk about food for hours (and often do), and it is never tiring or too much. When she was doing her first draft of the book, he came over one Saturday and brainstormed ideas with her for eight hours before declaring that if he didn’t get a pastry this second they would die. It was midnight when they went out searching for chocolate croissants, and when they couldn’t find any that suited Isabelle’s standards, she made them herself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It is nights like that one that she will miss the most when she is married, she thinks. She certainly won’t be able to pull all-nighters with Alex when Nicky is trying to sleep in the other room when he has an early day at the office. (Every day is an early day at the office for him.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neither her or Nicky have broached the subject of moving in together, at least not yet. Isabelle likes having her own space; she has always been that one. She moved into a single in her second year at Harvard, and she lived all on her own in a tiny garret apartment in Paris. She hasn’t had a roommate since she was eighteen years old, and she likes it that way, likes being able to leave papers out without fear of them being moved or ruined, likes having the kitchen all to herself, likes being able to stay up late if she wants. She has a routine, and she loves routine. She has spent the night at Nicky’s apartment certainly, has a drawer and a shelf in the bathroom and some space in the closet, but it is rare that he comes to her side of Central Park. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex, on the other hand, is at her apartment constantly, has clothes in the closet and coffee in the freezer and his own personal touches scattered around (the baking cabinet that he got her for Christmas, the print he had made for her of a screenshot from her first video that reached ten million views). He fixes her toilet and regrouts her bathroom and gets rid of spiders. She isn’t actually sure whether Nicky knows how to fix a toilet.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So I wanted to tell you something,” Alex says once their pizza has arrived, cutting Isabelle one slice of the sriracha half and another of the pecorino half, putting them on a plate and sliding it towards her. She swirls her wine around in her glass, taking a sip as the candlelight flickers over his face, making it unreadable.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Shoot.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve been seeing Lauren.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Isabelle practically spits her wine back out, managing to swallow it at the last second. (There’s no need to waste good wine after all.) “Since when?” she blurts out, knowing that there are probably better, less insane questions she could be asking right now but unable to help herself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Just a couple weeks.” Alex looks almost guilty, although why that would be she has no idea. “Since the end of January.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Is it serious?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Isabelle.” He narrows his eyes at her over the rim of his own wine glass. “It’s been two weeks. Easy. She’s not moving in with me. I’m just telling you because… I don’t know. Because I tell you everything.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, great,” Isabelle says, hoping she doesn’t sound too sarcastic. She really doesn’t like that girl. “We should double date.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex snorts. “Don’t say things you don’t mean.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They finish dinner with lava cake and vanilla bean cheesecake because Isabelle physically cannot go into a restaurant without ordering dessert. When she goes out to eat with Nicky, she is usually having dessert on her own, but Alex always joins her, insisting that they order more than one thing and often knocking her fork out of the way so he can get a better bite.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Isabelle was originally planning to go home that night; she is exhausted and a little cranky from being up so late last night. But the news about Alex and Lauren (she has to stop calling her Beauty &amp; Essex and starting calling her Lauren now that it looks like it might be going somewhere) has left a bad taste in her mouth, and she finds herself getting an Uber to Nicky’s apartment instead of her own, waving goodbye to Alex outside Industry Kitchen.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Even with the snow still coming down, the traffic is light enough that it only takes Isabelle twenty-five minutes to get up to Midtown. On her way, she texts Nicky, telling him that she is coming over and she’ll be there in less than a half an hour. He meets her at his apartment door after buzzing her up, his hair sticking up and his eyes bleary.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Shit,” she says. “You were sleeping.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I wasn’t.” He leans down to kiss her on the cheek, and she ducks underneath his arm to get into his apartment, which is much nicer and bigger and fancier than hers. She would be fine living here. She would like living here. She would be fine living here.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But when she gets in bed, Nicky already snoring next to her, she turns her back to him and thinks of Lauren in Alex’s bed where Isabelle has slept, in the kitchen where Isabelle has cooked a hundred times, on the big overstuffed armchair that she found at a garage sale but couldn’t fit into her own apartment. She know that technically she has no claim over Alex’s life, but most of the time it feels like she does.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Having Lauren will change that, she knows. It will change everything. If she was a better person, she would tell herself that as long as Alex is happy, nothing else matters, but she’s not so she doesn’t. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She can’t. Not with everything else in her life changing in a heartbeat. She can’t lose Alex too.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>🍯💛</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alex,” she hears Jackie hiss. “This cake says ‘Birthday, You, Yay’ on it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Listen, I panicked a little when I was icing it. For some reason I put Birthday at the top and then it all went a bit tits up from there. But it’s fine, it still makes sense. Kind of.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“She’s a baker and you fucked up her birthday cake!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Exactly, Jackie. She’s a baker. Nothing I make is going to be good enough anyways.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Isabelle is supposed to be in Alex’s room getting ready for her birthday party while Alex and Jackie set up, but she is having a bit of a problem with her right false lash and came out to find Jackie only to hear the two of them arguing about her birthday cake. Of course she has to hide around the corner to listen to what they are saying.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alex!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Keep your panties on,” he says, and Isabelle covers her mouth to keep from laughing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex and Jackie have known each other even longer than Alex and Isabelle have. Jackie has been at the test kitchen since the day she finished at the culinary institute. She was the test kitchen manager before Alex took over to give her more time to work on her own cookbook, and they have a relationship that would rival any sibling dynamic Isabelle could come up with. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay,” Jackie says, and she must be moving around the kitchen because Isabelle can hear cabinets and drawers opening and closing. “Candles?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll find them,” Alex said. “I’m going to put it in the fridge until it’s cake time. Go make sure Iz is ready.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It is too late for her to move; Jackie is already coming around the corner and practically smacks right into her, throwing her arms out at the last second. “Jesus, Isabelle, you scared the shit out of me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Iz?” Alex calls from the kitchen. “Don’t come in here!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“She’s not,” Jackie snaps back, leading Isabelle down the hallway and back into Alex’s room, where she promptly sits her down and reattaches the rogue eyelash. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So…” Isabelle says, trying to keep the smile off her face. “How is it going out there?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jackie rolls her eyes, but she too is holding back a grin. Jackie loves Alex, that much is obvious, no matter how much she insists that he annoys the bejesus out of her. “It’s gonna be great, Iz.” She spies Isabelle’s hair straightener plugged in next to the bed, still turned on, and grabs it, smoothing out some of the hair back where she couldn’t reach. “I know it’s not much, just a house party, but-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But nothing.” Isabelle looks up at her as Jackie moves around her. “It’s perfect.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex had a lot of big ideas about Isabelle’s twenty-ninth birthday, but she tried to rein him in a little. Between work, the book, and her personal life, she is absolutely exhausted, and there is truly nothing she wants more than a night in with all of her friends, no fireworks or live bands needed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>By the time she finishes her makeup and gets dressed, there are a couple dozen people in Alex’s living room, drinking and talking and laughing and fighting over who gets to control the music. Nicky is (oh so shockingly) not going to be here, but at least she knows that he is out of town for work and won’t have to look at the door every single time it opens, wondering if her boyfriend (fianc</span>
  <span>é</span>
  <span>… she needs to remember to call him that) is going to finally show up.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex looks up as soon as she comes into the living room, like he knew the exact moment that she was going to be standing there. He is by the fireplace, talking to Amandla, a drink in his hand, but he walks away the second he sees Isabelle, coming over to her. “You look great,” he says, his voice low under the buzz of the room around them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“This looks great,” she says, gesturing at everything. It is a typical Alexander Ludwig house party, but a little bit brighter and more colorful and warmer in intangible ways. He has left up the Christmas lights that she strung around the room (possibly out of sheer laziness, possibly for this party in particular), there is a fire burning happily in the fireplace, and every single person they work with brought food that is now spread out across the coffee table, kitchen table, and kitchen counter, bookended by massive amounts of alcohol (and, because they are chefs, everything they need to make it fancy). “I can’t believe you did all of this.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I can’t believe you didn’t let me do more.” He leads her over to the kitchen, and as she passes by the trays of food, she realizes they are replicas of things she has created on DIY Kitchen, gourmet pizza bagels and Twizzlers and Takis. She would give a few hundred dollars to see Alex try to make a Taki. “Can I make you a drink?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“God, yes please.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He made a batch of what he is calling birthday cake shots, a bright pink drink in a shot glass rimmed with sprinkles. It is tiny and cute and Isabelle takes a picture and puts it on her Instagram story before downing one. Alex tells her that it is Baileys Irish Creme, pink food coloring (“Don’t freak out, Iz, I used the expensive stuff from Citarella”), and cake vodka. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Next come the jello shots with edible glitter, the sangria, the cotton candy champagne. In between all of it, she tries to eat (there is certainly enough food to go around) but then she sees one of her friends from college or Leven needs a beer pong partner and she gets distracted.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then it is midnight and she is twenty-nine and Jackie helps Alex bring her birthday cake out of the kitchen, candles flickering on top. She recognizes it instantly as the chocolate layer cake recipe she spent six weeks perfecting for the magazine a couple of years ago, topped with swirled chocolate frosting and rainbow sprinkles, her two favorite things. She still clearly remembers the fight she got in with Alex over the frosting; for some reason he took it personally when she told him that the only acceptable icing is buttercream, that whipped icing is a coward’s choice and people who use fondant are demons who are welcome to meet her in the street to discuss the poor life choices that led them to accept Play-Doh as an acceptable cake decoration. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She knows how finicky this recipe is, that it must have taken Alex all day, and she laughs when she sees “Birthday, You, Yay” on the top, half obscured by sprinkles. “Happy birthday, Isabelle!” everyone sings as Alex brings the cake over to where she is sitting on the couch with Amandla and Mark on either side of her. He holds it in front of her until she can blow her candles out, meeting her eye over the flames and the wisp of smoke that follows. He knows that one of her favorite smells in the world is the one that lingers right after you blow out a candle; she has said many times that she wishes she could find a candle with that scent specifically, and he holds the cake there for an extra second before he takes it away, just so she can have a chance to smell it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He brings her a slice, kicking Amandla out of her spot so that he can sit down. She huffs away, sticking her tongue out at Alex over her shoulder as she goes to get a mini pizza bagel. “What do you think?” Alex asks as Isabelle takes a bite, and he swipes a fingerful of frosting off the top of the slice. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s perfect, Alex,” she says for what feels like the hundredth time that night, but she just can’t help herself; everything is perfect. A quick drunken thought flits through her head: how can it be perfect without Nicky here? What does that mean? But she bats it away quickly, not wanting to deal with the ramifications of whatever the answer might possible be. She puts her head on his shoulder, cutting through the cake with her fork as she does so. “Thank you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thank you,” Alex replies. “For being born.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, you really are the true winner here, aren’t you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They spend the next hour playing Mario Kart; Isabelle is pretty sure that Alex is letting her win, but she is too drunk to tell at this part. He lets Mark play for a couple of games until he rage quits after a particularly disappointing round of Rainbow Road, and Alex takes the controller back quickly before it winds up broken. Isabelle is so focused on the game that she doesn’t notice when the door opens (there have been people going in and out all night; she stopped paying attention hours ago) and a girl walks in, but Alex certainly does. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey, Iz,” he says, dropping the controller into her lap. “Hold this for me, I’ll be right back.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She tries to focus on his back as he crosses the room, but she has way too much to drink and not enough to eat and the world is starting to swim in front of hers. Jackie must see her across the room because she quickly comes over and sits down next to her, a plate of pigs in a blanket in her hand. Isabelle recognizes them as Jackie’s because of the melted cheese and bacon sprinkled over the top. It is exactly what she has been craving and she shoves a couple in her mouth quickly. “Thanks, J,” she mumbles, still focused on Alex, who is talking to the girl who just came through the door.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey,” Jackie says. She is sitting on the couch behind her, Isabelle on the floor with the plate balanced on her knees, and she leans over Isabelle, pointing towards the door. “Isn’t that…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Suddenly Isabelle realizes exactly who it is. She should have known right away who the girl was, but her brain isn’t exactly firing on all cylinders right now. “It’s Lauren.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Right, right. Lauren. Which I will definitely call her to her face instead of Beauty &amp; Essex.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What is she doing here?” Isabelle asks, and she feels like she should try to get up and go over there but her legs aren’t working. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, I assume she came for your birthday, Iz.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But I don’t know her,” she says petulantly, taking Mark’s beer out of his hand. He protests as she holds it out of his reach, but Jackie takes it from her, something that Isabelle will probably thank her for in the morning, although she may already be past the point of no return by a few big steps. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s fine.” Jackie pats her back reassuringly, but Isabelle is anything but reassured. She has avoided talking about Lauren with Alex since the night at Industry Kitchen that he told them they were dating. She does know he isn’t calling him her girlfriend since she overheard Mark ask him if she was the other day, and his answer (at that point at least) was a resounding no. She also knows he can’t have spent that much time with her altogether because the last couple weeks he has either been with Isabelle or texting Isabelle every single night.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But now she is here at Isabelle’s birthday party. And, okay, it is technically Isabelle’s party but it is in Alex’s apartment and was planned by Alex so he is certainly at liberty to invite whoever he wants. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Even so, she is irritated, and with the amount of alcohol in her system, there is probably no hiding it. Alex ends up leaving Lauren with Leven for a little while, coming back so they can finish their Mario Kart grand prix, but Isabelle is over it. “Hey,” Alex says after she ignores him for the third time. “What’s wrong?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She doesn’t say anything, just glances back at him over her shoulder and tries to stop herself from rolling her eyes. She fails, and Alex pulls her up, practically shoving her into his bedroom. “Okay,” he says as soon as the door shuts behind them and the noise of the party falls away. “Out with it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Out with what?” She sits down on his bed, pouting up at him. Standing up quickly made her head spin, and she feels like she is either going to throw up or have to lie down. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Whatever is bothering you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex pushes her backwards gently until she is sitting up against his pillows, and he produces his Nalgene bottle seemingly out of nowhere, handing it to her. “There’s nothing bothering me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Now it is his turn to roll his eyes at her as she takes a drink of water. “Drink more,” he says. “Do I look stupid to you? You’re mad that Lauren is here.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m not mad,” Isabelle says, and technically she isn’t. She’s… something, but she doesn’t know what that something is, and if she couldn’t put a sentiment to the feeling when she is sober, they certainly aren’t going to come out now. Even so, she finds herself speaking, words falling out of her mouth before she can stop them and coming to rest in between them. “I just wanted to spend the night with you, you know? It’s my birthday and that’s what I wanted, and now you aren’t going to talk to me and things are going to be different.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Isabelle.” Alex reaches forward quickly, taking the Nalgene bottle out of her hand and setting it down on the nightstand because it is listing dangerously to the side. “I’m never going to stop talking to you. I’m never going to stop seeing you. Nothing between us is going to be different, I promise.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But how do you know that?” She crosses her arms over her chest, suddenly cold even though the room is warm around them. “How can you possibly say that for sure?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Because I can.” Alex lays down next to her, resting his head on her shoulder and throwing his arm across her stomach, sighing heavily. “Because I won’t let that happen.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She lets her head rest on top of his, closing her eyes. As soon as she does, the room spins around her and she pops her eyes open again quickly. “Alex?” she says softly, his breathing low and even like he is falling asleep.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah?” he answers, his voice syrupy and lazy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m sorry.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He looks up at her. “For what?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“For being a brat when you did all this.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He puts his head back down on her shoulder, tightening his arm around her for a moment. “Don’t apologize. Believe me. I understand.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>🍯💛</span>
</p><p>
  <b>Whodunnit </b>
  <span>Everyone else: This has no smell. Jackie: There’s no aroma.</span>
</p><p>
  <b>San JDS </b>
  <span>“Everything tastes the same.” “I’m completely lost.” “I can’t tell what it is, it’s cheese.” Mark is a whole mood</span>
</p><p>
  <b>MDW </b>
  <span>I love how Alex is so boisterously confidently wrong.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. we’ll be kings and queens in our own mind</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>we don’t need no bankroll to make us feel alive<br/>we don’t need no benzo to feel like we can ride<br/>richer than solomon with you by my side<br/>we’ll be kings and queens in our own mind<br/>/ kings &amp; queens by mat kearney</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>“We’re going to do what now?” Alex practically explodes when Dayo outlines the plan for April’s videos, and he has to stop himself from turning around and whipping a pen at Jackie who started laughing hysterically as soon as Dayo opened his mouth and informed them that they are going to be switching shows. Without even having to see the schedule Dayo’s assistant is passing around, Alex knows that he is going to be forced to make something insanely difficult on DIY Kitchen; all the comments lately have asked them to host each other’s shows for April Fools, and ninety-nine percent of the comments have suggested that Alex take Isabelle’s spot. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s going to be fine,” Dayo says calmly, ignoring Alex’s freak-out entirely. He is used to dealing with their outbursts, although to be fair, it is usually Isabelle or Mark having the outburst. “No one is going to be expecting anything other than a bit of fun.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m doing DIY Kitchen, aren’t I?” Alex grabs the paper off the table in front of him, scanning it quickly. “It’s going to be a disaster.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He can still hear Jackie snickering behind him, and Leven, Isabelle, and Amandla have joined her and are doing a very bad job of hiding it. “It’s not,” Dayo says. “I promise.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex doesn’t believe him, but he has to because he has no choice. Dayo goes on to say that Isabelle will be filming Wild Card, Amandla is taking over Mad Mark (she smirks, but Alex is sure that they are going to make her do something horrific), Leven is going to be attempting Shadow Chef, and Mark will be on Mirror Mirror. (“If Megan Fox is not the guest, I want no part of it.”)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Isabelle echoes Dayo’s words when they are sitting in his office a few hours later, and he does not believe them any more now than he did when Dayo was the one reassuring him. “It’s going to be fine. I’ll be around to help. And it’s not like they’re going to make you do anything crazy difficult like Pop Rocks or Doritos. Besides,” she says thoughtfully, “even if it is a nightmare, it’ll be three days, four max, and then you can go back to just hanging out and doing whatever you want on Wild Card.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I guess,” Alex says grumpily, but maybe that does make him feel a little better. He can handle three or four days of anything, or at least that’s what he is going to tell himself to get through. Although, he thinks, if they could conquer sourdoughnuts (or at least finish without burning down the test kitchen), this should be a piece of cake. Metaphorically speaking at least, since baking cake is actually a bit of a bitch. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If it makes you feel any better, mine is gonna be great,” Isabelle says, grinning at him. She definitely got off the easiest in this swap (Alex is under no impression that Wild Card is at all hard to film, unless, of course, you are making sourdough fucking doughnuts), although she certainly deserves it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She has been more stressed than ever since her birthday party last weekend. She has been working on the book nonstop, just like she has for the last eight months, but all of a sudden her next deadline is looming and Alex has barely heard from her. At least he assumes it is because of the book and not for any other more nefarious reason. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So listen,” Alex says. “I have to go to LA next week.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What, why?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Just for a day,” he says. “I have to do that photo shoot for the chef’s knife since it comes out next month.” Alex has been working on a collaboration with Fell for at least six months (sometimes it  feels like much longer but maybe that’s just because he can barely keep his life organized); he designed his own chef’s knife, and in his opinion it’s the best thing it’s ever done. It’s about to go up for sale, and the last thing he has to do is the photo shoot. Going to Los Angeles for less than twenty-four hours is not high on his list of things to do, especially not now with the thought of DIY Kitchen hanging over his head, but at least it will be sunny and warm especially with the grayness of March in New York following him wherever he goes. He loves this city, but sometimes he just needs a little goddamn sun.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Isabelle pulls up her calendar on her phone; Alex can see her swipe away a text that comes in as she scrolls through her schedule for next week. “When?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Monday,” he says, a little guiltily but he had no idea that they were going to start filming the April Fools episodes so soon. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So you’re gonna miss the first day of Wild Card filming.” She pouts at him, and he would change his flight if he could. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m sorry! I will be back Tuesday for sure.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex has to go film a cooking video (Alex Makes Skirt Steak with Romesco), and it goes fine but he certainly feels more subdued than he does on a normal day. He is tired and the sky is gray and for some reason he has an extra intense feeling of ennui today. He can’t explain it, and it certainly isn’t like him, but that’s just life he figures.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Isabelle comes down from her desk to try his finished product, declaring it delicious and nearly fighting Leven for the last bite. He recipe tests for the rest of the afternoon, trying to ignore his colleagues as much as possible because he honestly doesn’t know if he’ll get through the rest of the day without snapping at someone and God forbid it is Jackie because she will not hesitate to tell him about himself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He manages to sneak out the door at the end of the day without seeing anyone, and he has big plans to go home, sit on the couch, and watch mindless television for the rest of the night. Tomorrow has to be better, right?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The truth of the matter is that he doesn’t know if tomorrow will be better because he can’t pinpoint what’s actually wrong. He’s not an idiot, so he knows that it has something to do with all the subtle (yet very specific) ways that his life has been changing in the last few weeks, but it could be one of any number of things.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe it’s the fact that his best friend is engaged. He knows he only met Isabelle five years ago, which might not be a lot of time in the grand scheme of life, but he cannot remember a single moment of his life that he didn’t know her. He certainly wouldn’t have it any other way. And for the first four years of their friendship, it was just the two of them. She could (and would) call him at two o’clock in the morning to come get rid of a mouse that she didn’t want to deal with. He brought her as his date to every party or event or fundraiser he went to. They kept extra clothes and coffee (since they have wildly different hot drink preferences) and phone chargers at each other’s apartments, just so they would always have them when inevitably they needed them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And now, it’s not just the two of them anymore. He has to share her, something that he never wanted to have to do and certainly never gave more than a second’s thought to. Even when she started dating Nicky, he didn’t think about it because frankly, it didn’t seem like anything had changed. She still slept in his bed while he fell asleep on the couch. She still texted him at all hours of the night. He didn’t see her or speak to her any less.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But now he is really losing her. Now the possibility that had loomed far off in the distance is no longer a speck but something giant that is blocking his entire field of vision and forcing him to deal with it head on. Alex hates dealing with things head on. He prefers to ignore them entirely until they go away, and that has worked for him for thirty years.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Which brings up the next thing that is now sitting on chest, getting steadily more heavy the more often he thinks about it: in just a couple of months, he will be thirty-one. And what does he have to show for it? He loves his job; he loves his home; he loves the life that he has built for himself. But shouldn’t he, at some point, start thinking beyond himself?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Which brings him to Lauren. She is nice. She is pretty (although if Jackie or Leven mention one more time that she bears a striking resemblance to Isabelle, he may be forced to commit a crime). She likes what he likes, and they certainly don’t run out of things to talk about. But is that enough? Does that mean that maybe he should start thinking beyond the next few months and start considering the rest of his life? Isabelle certainly is.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She hasn’t mentioned much about Nicky or the engagement to him since it happened. He doesn’t know if they have settled on a date, if they are planning, if they are looking at venues or caterers or flowers or whatever the fuck else you have to look at when planning a wedding. In another universe, Alex would ask her about it, but that universe is not this one, and he is too stubborn to bring up a topic that she has clearly taken off the table.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>All he knows is that he lays in bed at night, stares at the ceiling, and can’t shake the thought that sometimes his soul feels too big for his body. </span>
</p><p>
  <b>Isabelle Makes Sourdough Crepes | Wild Card</b>
</p><p>
  <span>It feels weird to shoot Alex’s show when Alex isn’t even in her time zone. He left for Los Angeles on the red eye last night; she woke up to a text from him telling her that he made it, that he has not broken his streak of talking the flight attendant into giving him extra tiny liquor bottles, and that she will do great tomorrow. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Honestly, Isabelle knows she will. DIY Kitchen will always have a special place in her heart, but at her core she is a chef and the thing she loves to do more than anything else in the world is cook. And that’s what she gets to do today. No fucking around with rock tumblers or pressure cookers or drying racks for Mentos or Skittles made out of toothpicks stuck into foam board. No, today she gets to make crepes on camera and get paid for her, the kind of thing she would have said was her dream job when she was ten years old before she realized you couldn’t turn that into a career. Somehow, miraculously, in this life, the one she is living at twenty-nine years old, it is her career, and she is excited as hell.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’s not even late today. It helped that Nicky got up early and made her coffee. She doesn’t really drink coffee if she can help it, much prefers her honey tea, but he tried and that’s something. She certainly has more energy than she normally does on a Monday morning, dampened only slightly by the knowledge that she won’t walk into the office and be greeted by Alex, usually the only plus side to her mornings. (She really isn’t a morning person.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She is greeted by Jack and Willow, who look a little surprised that she is on time. It is weird not to be filming with Josh and Jen, but at least she did those three disastrous episodes of sourdough doughnuts, so she isn’t coming in completely blind. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How much time do you need to get ready?” Willow asks her as she throws her coat in Alex’s office. Just because he’s not here does not mean that she needs to walk all the way upstairs and get sucked into her emails at her desk; what else is his office for except to hold the belongings she is too lazy to take to her own office?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m ready now,” she says, grabbing one of her aprons out of Alex’s closet, slipping it on over her head and pushing up the sleeves of her crewneck (also Alex’s, she realizes, from one of his obscure outfitter brands that she stole and shrunk in the wash until she only had to roll up the sleeves a couple of times for it to fit her). Ian, their sound guy, is waiting at her workstation to help her get her mic on, and before she knows it, they are rolling.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hi, I’m Isabelle, I’m in the test kitchen, and today I’m going to be making crepes suzette.” It is the same intro that she has given for every DIY Kitchen she has ever done, but that is where the similarities end. Normally when she starts a new episode of DIY Kitchen, she is filled with dread at the thought of the big expanse of space stretching out in front of her, her Type A personality making it almost impossible for her to handle not knowing what to do. Today she knows exactly what she needs to do, down to the very last step.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She explains crepes suzette and what makes them different from regular crepes (the sauce, which is made out of butter and orange juice and Grand Marnier, making them possibly one of Isabelle’s favorite desserts of all time), and then she explains that she is going to be putting a further twist on the crepes by using sourdough starter to add a little extra complexity and flavor. The only problem is she left her starter at home, something she didn’t realize until she was on the A train that morning. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So my plan is to steal from Alex,” she says, shrugging. “Here’s the thing. Y’all may not know this, but Alex has his own secret freezer in one of the storage rooms off the back hallway, and he keeps it locked. I certainly don’t have the key, and he did not text me back this morning when I asked him who does. But Jackie told me she thinks that she can help me out.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jackie is in the back, throwing salt into a pot of boiling water as Mark stands by and tells her that it might be too much. (You can never have too much salt in Jackie’s book, not so much a problem when she is putting it in pasta water but maybe a little bit of a problem when she is stirring it into her chocolate milk.) “Jackie!” Isabelle calls over to her. “You ready?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“For the heist?” Jackie shoves her stirring spoon at Mark, leaving behind him and her pot of water. “Always. I’ve been waiting for this ever since I found out about the secret freezer.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jack follows them with the camera out the back door of the kitchen and down the hallway full of storage rooms (closets, more like). They are packed full of camera equipment and extra ingredients that don’t have to be refrigerated and, apparently, Alex’s secret stash. “What’s in this freezer, Jackie?” Jack asks, moving slowly down the narrow hallway with the camera on his shoulder.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh tons of stuff,” Jackie says, pushing the door open and holding it for Jack and Isabelle to come through. “Basically everything he has ever made and kept to use later. I’m pretty sure his fancy tortilla press is hid somewhere in here also.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“When did he turn into such a pack rat?” Isabelle asks, crouching down to examine the lock on the outside of the freezer. She thought that maybe Jackie was exaggerating, but nope, it really is locked. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Unfortunately for Alex, Jackie is some kind of evil genius, and clearly she has thought this through already. It is actually a double freezer, as tall as a fridge with two doors, one on top and one on the bottom. Alex’s, firmly locked, is the one on the bottom, which means that when Jackie opens the door on the top and lifts up the grate separating the two freezers, Isabelle can reach in and grab the tub of starter, clearly labelled in Alex’s messy handwriting as “SD starter.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“See?” Jackie says brightly, letting the grate fall with a cold clank and slamming the top freezer door shut. “Piece of cake.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Perfect!” Isabelle turns it over her hand. “Thanks, Jackie.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They head back to the test kitchen, Isabelle dumping the tub of starter on the workstation because it is starting to freezer burn her hand. Jackie goes back to Mark and whatever she is making, and Isabelle explains to the camera that the starter needs to thaw out a little before she can work with it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How does this go?” she asks Willow after she puts the starter into a bowl of warm water. “I just do whatever I want?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Basically.” Willow shrugs. “We are much less structured than DIY Kitchen. Mainly because Alex would have a problem with that level of structure.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Isabelle laughs; it might be mean, but she genuinely can’t wait to see Alex film her show. She is already coming up with an excuse to try to watch the entire thing, even though she has a couple of meetings and a call with her editor spread across the days that he is going to be filming later this week. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So the key,” Isabelle says, getting out a pan from underneath the counter and waiting for Willow to throw her a stick of butter from the fridge behind the camera set-up, “is browning the butter.” She goes over to the stove, turning the heat on high and dumping the butter into the pan, waiting for it to melt. “Browning butter is finicky,” she says, tilting the pan so the butter slides across the surface. “People are so worried about burning it because it does burn really fast, but then they make the mistake of turning the heat too low so it takes forever. Once it starts to bubble, pull it off the heat and it will continue to cook as it sits.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It only takes a couple of minutes until it looks ready, the butter a pretty caramel color underneath the bubbles that sit on the surface. “This is so nice,” she says to Jack as she carries the pan back to her workstation. “Jen isn’t yelling at me… I’m not being called insolent or insubordinate for refusing to do things.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Willow snorts. “What on earth do they do to you on DIY Kitchen?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Torture,” Isabelle says. She does love it most of the time, but the bad times are bad, as evidenced by the Skittles episode. She knows they are going to be making her do Starbursts sooner or later (she is guessing sooner, and that Dayo will drop that bomb on her at their meeting tomorrow), and it’s going to be as nightmarish as the Skittles episode was, if not more. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Isabelle makes the batter, folding together the flour, salt, and sugar, cracking eggs into a well in the center and whisking the whole mess together before streaming in milk, adding the starter, and pouring the brown butter in to finish it off. It goes quickly; she has made crepes so many times that she doesn’t have to measure anything, doing it all from sight even more so than she does anything else. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The batter has to sit overnight, so she is done with filming for the day. Without Alex there, she doesn’t know what to do; she gets caught up on emails that she has been putting off for a week and gets a few more pages off to her editor so that she doesn’t get yelled at during their call tomorrow and does her best to get Dayo to tell her what the next DIY Kitchen is going to be (with no solid results, although she is more sure it is going to be Starbursts than ever). </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then she goes to Nicky’s apartment, where she has been spending more and more time. They still haven’t talked about moving in together, and Isabelle is still relieved about that. But she has slept at his apartment more often than not lately; in fact, Pep seems to much prefer Nicky’s apartment to hers, due to the floor to ceiling windows where he can sit all day while they’re at work and stare at birds on the balcony, his tail flicking back and forth. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Even so (and she would never say this to anyone, not even Alex), it doesn’t really feel like they are engaged. Sure, she has a giant ring on her finger, but that’s about the only change. Nicky has sort of dropped any wedding talk that he might have been entertaining before, since Isabelle told him she won’t even be able to think about it before her book is finished, off her desk, and turned in to her editor. She never wanted to be engaged for a long time, but right now it doesn’t seem like that bad of a trade off for a little more sanity and a little less stress. When she does get married, she wants it to be perfect, not something where the details will keep her up at night if they aren’t perfect. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And Nicky, to his credit, understands. Somehow he’s busier at his job than ever, busier even than she is. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like a relationship. Sometimes it just feels like they are roommates who occasionally have sex and evenutally plan on legally tying themselves to each other for the rest of time. But she knows that she loves him, feels it when she looks at him or when he makes her coffee in the morning so she won’t be late to work.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If she wants anything more, she doesn’t say it. Not to anyone. Not even to herself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>🍯💛</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The first crepe is gonna suck,” Isabelle says the next morning, trying to stifle a yawn as she dips her ladle into the bowl of batter sitting on the counter next to the stovetop. “Which is fine with me because I’m fucking starving.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She did not have a good morning. Not only did Nicky not make her coffee like he did yesterday, but he used the last of it for the cup he took to work with him. She didn’t have time to make her tea since Jack made her pinky promise not to be late, and a caffeine headache is barreling towards her at a full sprint. She could feel it building while she was whisking the batter so that it would be ready to pour after sitting in the fridge all night, and now it is building behind one eye and making her extra cranky. After her great day yesterday, she is really hoping this one turns around soon.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And it does because a few seconds after she is thinking that if she doesn’t get some caffeine in her system she will die, Alex comes through the door. She doesn’t see him since her back is to the door, but all of a sudden he pops up at her elbow, scaring the shit out of her and making her fling batter across the stovetop. “You’re back!” she says, already cheered up.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m back,” he says, grinning down at her. “And I brought you…” He pulls an iced coffee out from behind his back. “It’s not tea, but I just had a hunch that it was more of a coffee kind of day.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh my God. You are my hero.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, duh. So.” He leans on the counter, looking over her shoulder. “How is it going?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You know. First crepe.” Sure enough, the first one sucks, not enough color and too thick. She pulls it out of the pan, dropping it on the plate next to her before it burns the crap out of her fingers. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Gimme.” He takes the plate from her, folding the crepe in half with absolutely no regard for how hot it is and shoves it in his mouth. “Iz, it’s perfect,” he says with his mouth full, raising his eyebrows at her. “What are you gonna put with it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Beurre Suzette,” Isabelle says, tilting the pan as she pours in another layer of batter, much thinner than the first one this time. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s gonna be great.” Alex finishes off the rest of the crepe, going to sit down at the stool at her workstation. “But hear me out… ham and cheese.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You can’t make every single thing in the world savory,” Isabelle says, rolling the pan around as the edges of the crepe start to get crispy. She flips it, only fucking it up a little. “I thought we had this talk during sourdough doughnuts.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Speaking of doughnuts, where did you get the starter for these?” Alex asks, pushing his glasses up. She isn’t used to seeing him in glasses at work, but she knows that being on a plane makes his eyes super dry for about a week after he lands since he never stops complaining about it. “Is it yours from home?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Out of the corner of her eye, Isabelle can see Jackie dart into the walk in, leaving Mark by himself at the workstation they share, looking bewildered. “Well…” She takes her time, pulling the crepe out of the pan and pouring another one before she answers. “Remember when I texted you yesterday asking if I could use the pizza dough starter? And you texted me back six hours later telling me that you used it all?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I was sleeping, I told you that!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Anyways,” she says, glaring at him. “Jackie and I had to break into your freezer.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You did what now?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t freak about it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Wait! Who gave you a key?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jackie comes wandering over, apparently weighing Isabelle’s need for help against her own fear of being yelled at by Alex. “Listen,” Jackie says, taking the last of the first crepe out of Alex’s hand and eating it. “We did what we had to do. That’s what happens when you don’t text people back.” As Isabelle is flipping another crepe, Jackie explains what they did.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well…” Alex says when she is done. “That’s not as egregious as I was expecting I suppose.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“See?” Jackie folds her arms across her chest triumphantly. “Maybe you’ll answer your phone next time.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex pouts at her, but Isabelle knows that he isn’t serious. She finishes making the crepes as Jackie and Alex argue about the right way to say croissant. Alex insists on saying it in a French accent even though he doesn’t speak a lick of French, and Isabelle knows that he is just trying to goad her into speaking French because for some reason it is one of his favorite things. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Isabelle is just putting the last crepe on a plate when Alex stands up, cracking his back as he does so. “I’ve gotta go upstairs,” he says, circling around Isabelle as she comes back to her workstation, leaving the plate of crepes next to the stovetop. “They keep kicking back my expense reports for some reason.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Maybe because you leave them entirely blank?” Jackie asks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I do not! I put ‘Lyft to meeting’ and they sent it back asking for more information,” Alex says indignantly. “More information like what?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, probably like who you are meeting with.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s not their business!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Isabelle snorts. “I think their point is that it’s exactly their business.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, whatever.” Alex waves her off like what she is saying is insane instead of just an explanation of normal business practices. “I’ll be back in time to try the finished product. Unless they fire me, in which case I will be back to beg you to let me move into your apartment.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She makes beurre Suzette, which is just butter mixed with sugar and orange zest and is probably the best compound butter of all time. She fries the crepes in the butter, splashing orange juice into the pan so that they caramelize. Once they are a deep golden brown color, she pulls them out of the pan to make the sauce, mixing together orange juice, lemon juice, Grand Marnier, orange zest, and even more butter. (You can never have enough butter in Isabelle’s opinion, but she’s just going to keep the number of sticks she used to herself if anyone asks.) </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Now is the fun part,” Isabelle says, throwing a crepe back into the pan. “And also the part I am most likely to fuck up.” She is secretly glad that Alex is still upstairs dealing with the accounting department because she hasn’t flamb</span>
  <span>éed</span>
  <span> anything in a while and is probably a little rusty on the technique. But she figures the only way to find out is to actually do it, so she tilts the pan away from her and tips some cognac in it, the entire thing going up in flames just like she wanted. “See?” She beams at the camera. “Easy.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jackie comes back over, Mark and Amandla in tow, and they wait rather impatiently as Isabelle plates the crepes with vanilla ice cream, all of the sauce from the pan, and orange zest grated on top. It looks incredible, and Isabelle is rather proud of herself. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alexander comes barrelling into the kitchen at the last second, wrestling the plate away from Mark and taking the last couple of bites for himself. “It’s delicious, Iz,” he says, his mouth full as Mark glares at him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You got some earlier!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That was just a tester, Marcus. Ease up.” He turns to Isabelle. “Okay, I’m just saying. A savory version of this would be incredible.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alex, if I hear you say savory one more time…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And just like that, she is done filming Wild Card. She can’t believe it went so smoothly (except she can because what is Wild Card except for Alex standing in front of the camera, talking a lot, and doing whatever he wants, and if there is anything Isabelle is good at, it is thinking, talking, and eating). She has a bad feeling that the rest of the week isn’t going to be quite as easy for Alex.</span>
</p><p>
  <b>Alex Makes Gourmet Andes Mints | DIY Kitchen</b>
</p><p>
  <span>If Alex has to suffer, then someone else does too. At least that’s what Alex decides when he goes to inform Dayo that he is desperately going to need help with his DIY Kitchen video. “Okay,” Dayo says, not even looking up from the binder full of the mock up of the next issue that he is flipping through. “Who do you want?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Huh?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Pick someone. Who do you want to do it with you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And that is how Mark ends up standing next to Alex when the first day of DIY Kitchen begins filming. He complained a little bit, but they managed to get Megan Fox for his episode of Mirror Mirror, so he can’t bitch too much. “Hi, I’m Alex and this is Mark and today we’re making gourmet Andes Mints,” he says as soon as Josh indicates that they are rolling. He has watched Isabelle film DIY Kitchen dozens of times, and the words she normally begins each episode with sound surreal coming out of his mouth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So what happened to Isabelle?” Josh asks from behind the camera.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, we kidnapped her and put her in the basement,” Alex says, tying his apron behind his back and knocking over a couple of the boxes of Andes Mints stacked high in front of them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You know, when you say that it doesn’t sound like you’re joking,” Mark says, picking them up, and Alex laughs. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What do you guys know about these?” Jen asks, pointing towards the tower of mints.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, that they suck,” Alex says quickly. He has never met anyone but Isabelle who likes these stupid things, and he figures that is probably pretty universal, but Mark looks at him like he has grown a second head.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Wait, what? I don’t mind them!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are you kidding me? They are disgusting.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>As if on cue, Amandla comes up behind him. “Oh, I don’t hate these!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes you do,” Alex says, not even turning around. She shoves her way in between them, jabbing her elbow into his rib and taking a handful. “You know Isabelle wanted you to do these specifically so you would have to temper chocolate.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex kind of figured that Isabelle had something to do with the Andes Mint choice. (He had really pushed for Rolos or Pop-Tarts, but whatever.) Maybe he should have been a little more encouraging during the Kit Kats episode instead of informing her that if she didn’t temper chocolate, then it wasn’t really a Kit Kat. That definitely came back to bite him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They break into the chocolate, eating a couple of pieces each, and their general consensus is that it is too minty. “The mint is seriously overpowering the dark chocolate,” Mark says, biting one in half and peering at it. “You can’t taste the white chocolate at all.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex looks over at the piece. “I bet the mint is only in the white chocolate.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You think?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, it’s a skosh green.” Mark looks at it more closely, squinting, but Alex can tell that he doesn’t believe him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jen has him call some of the other chefs over to get their opinion, which is decidedly split. Jackie thinks they are too minty, but Liam is adamant that any respectable person likes an Andes Mint. “They’re pure class,” he says, taking a handful for the road. Jack raises the question of how they are going to get the design on the front, mountains etched crisply in the top layer of chocolate. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I think we should do a mold,” Alex says confidently. He has seen Isabelle do it more than once; he was the one who ordered her the kits in the first place. She uses this fancy food-safe silicone that comes in two parts that you mix together; it worked perfectly for peanut M&amp;M’s and Oreos, and Alex figures it’s just the thing they need for these fucking mints with the mountains on them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex sits down on a stool as Mark gets a mold kit from the cabinet where Isabelle keeps all of her weird, you would only ever need this for a DIY Kitchen episode equipment. “God,” he says, putting his head down on his arms. “I feel like Isabelle when she’s four days in.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re Day Four Isabelle but it’s, like…” Mark glances at his watch as he puts the kit and a metal bowl down on the workstation. “Minute forty Alex.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know, but what’s the point?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They weigh a chocolate, Mark writing down the weight in his notebook and pushing it aside as Alex cuts the chocolate open and dissects the layers. “We’re doing everything Isabelle would do except freak out,” Mark says, leaning close to the cutting board to inspect the mint layer. “Oh, shit, you were right! It is green!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“See? I know what I’m talking about sometimes.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They waste another ten minutes playing paper football with the Andes Mint wrappers which honestly makes Alex feel much better about what he knows will be two straight days of hell. (Two straight days if he is lucky. If this turns into a four-dayer,, he might have to quit completely and go back to restaurant kitchen work.) Finally, Josh interrupts them to make them (more specifically Alex) read the ingredients, a segment that normally goes smoothly when Isabelle does it but is now filled with Alex mispronouncing things, Mark correcting him, and Alex saying, “yeah, yeah, that’s what I said.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So…” Alex picks up one of the boxes that is still wrapped from the stack in front of them. “Were these originally made in Europe or what?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ooh.” Mark makes a face at him, wrinkling his nose. “I’ve got bad news for you, bud.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex instantly realizes what is about to happen and tries to head him off at the pass. “The Andes aren’t in Europe, are they?” It’s not a question. He’s just an idiot.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They are not.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ten minutes later, Alex is still thinking about it. “God, I can’t believe I fucking said that,” he says as Mark is hunched over the computer, researching Andes Mints because Josh told them that they had to. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s fine,” Mark says, clicking a tad too hard as he closes a window. They didn’t want to do any research, but apparently Isabelle does this every single time. Needless to say, they aren’t finding anything helpful. (It might be helpful, but they certainly aren’t going to use any of it. They prefer to come up with their own plan, then proceed full steam ahead without paying attention to comments, criticism, or constructive suggestions.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Isabelle isn’t in the office today, which Alex is quite aware is contributing to his shitty mood, but she texts him as Mark is on the computer, telling him that she is sure he is doing a great job and she will be there tomorrow to try the finished product. After that, he brightens up a little bit and is feeling pretty jar two-thirds full by the time they start making the mold, mixing the putty together like bread dough until it is soft enough for them to form into a rectangle deep and wide enough to carefully press eight mints into.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They let it sit for thirty minutes that they fill with more wrapper hockey and reading about tempering on their phones like they are cramming for a test (which Alex supposes they kind of are). Then it comes time to pop the chocolate out of the mold, and Alex holds his breath but there is no need to worry because the mountain shows up perfectly in each little square. “We are doing a fucking bang up job,” he says to Mark as they start gathering chocolate to melt.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Unfortunately, the hard part is just beginning. As Alex remembers from culinary school and is reminded every time Isabelle has to temper chocolate, it is an incredibly finicky process. Josh makes Mark explain to the camera what tempering is, but Alex has heard Isabelle do the same thing so many times that it is her words circling his brain as Mark talks. She says the same thing every time: “Tempering is the process of heating and cooling chocolate to certain temperatures to give it a glossy texture and that snap when you break it.” The theory is easy to understand but incredibly hard to execute. Alex knows from the research that they just did that dark chocolate needs to be heated to a hundred and fifteen degrees before seed chocolate (chocolate that has already been tempered) is melted into it and the whole thing is cooled down to eighty-nine degrees. Given the fact that the white chocolate requires different temperatures to temper, Alex knows that they are about to be entering a veritable disaster zone.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Is tempering difficult?” Josh asks them. “And have you maybe been a little hard on Isabelle in the past?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex snorts. “No,” he says simply, although it is a lie on both counts. Both Alex and Mark have forced Isabelle to temper chocolate against her will on more than one occasion, far more than anyone else in the kitchen has. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mark chimes in. “Isabelle makes it especially hard for herself with the circulating method,” he says. “We are not doing it that way, so what’s the big deal?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The big deal is that they have no idea what they’re doing. Keeping one bowl of chocolate at the right temperature long enough for the crystal structure to form is difficult enough; two separate bowls with two separate working temperatures and two separate goal temperatures is a goddamn nightmare, even with two of them sweating their butts off at the stove. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The first batch is crap; Alex knows it, Mark knows it, and Josh knows it. Alex’s mistake is clear; he doesn’t let the dark chocolate make it to a hundred and fifteen degrees before he takes it off the heat and seeds it with big chunks of already tempered chocolate, and the seeded chocolate drops it down to eighty-six degrees way too quickly. Even so, they spread it on a strip of parchment paper to see what it looks like when it dries, the temper test, and while they wait they cut the mold into individual squares so they can put them on a scale as they fill them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Within seconds, it is clear that Alex’s test strip is not setting up, and he has to stop himself from throwing it across the kitchen. “Do you want a hug?” Leven asks, stopping by their station as she heads to the fridge behind Josh. “That’s what I usually do with Isabelle.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It is way too early to be handing out hugs,” Mark snaps, but Alex isn’t so sure.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They try again, making sure to bring the chocolate to a hotter temperature before seeding it. Alex also decides to chop the seeded chocolate finer so that it will melt faster, and it works perfectly. The test strip comes out great, so they fill a mold with one layer of dark chocolate, not wanting to push their luck with a whole piece of candy, and it’s perfect. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“See!” Alex says triumphantly, like Mark was the one doubting him. “The first crepe is never the best, bud.” If there is anything he has learned from Isabelle over the last few years, it is that the first crepe always sucks. You just have to eat that crepe as a pick me up snack and try again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They compare the first batch with the second at Josh’s request. “Oh, it’s FUBAR,” Alex says as Mark pops the layer of chocolate from the first batch out of its mold. Alex turns it over, holding it closer to the camera. “See how it’s grainy and weird. If it was properly tempered, it wouldn’t look like that.” He breaks it in half, handing one piece to Mark and popping the other in his mouth. “Tastes good though.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So how are you feeling right now?” Josh asks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Confidence is high coming out of day one,” Mark says. “We just have to keep that momentum going.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When they come in the next day, Alex is feeling great. He figures that they have a couple of hours to go, including the time that the molds will have to chill in the fridge. Jen presents them with shiny green foil wrappers and sends them on their way to finish. None of them have any idea that the day is going to devolve into absolute chaos until it is already happening.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mark starts melting chocolate while Alex practices wrapping. (He has never been a good Christmas present wrapper; gift bags exist for a reason, in his opinion.) They do the same exact thing that they did yesterday, but immediately it starts going to hell with the seeding chocolate refusing to melt no matter how fine they chop it and the entire mixture getting too cold too quickly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s fine,” Alex says, their roles apparently reversed from the day before since he is now the one being optimistic.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s not fine,” Mark says, rubbing a wrist across his forehead and leaving a smear of chocolate behind. Alex decides not to point it out, simply because Mark got to spend forty-five minutes with Megan Fox two days ago while Alex filled out expense reports from his trip to Los Angeles for the third time. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eventually Amandla takes pity on them and comes over to help, leaning over their mixing bowls and scrutinizing their work. If you asked anyone but Amandla who the most talented chef in the kitchen was, they would all without question say Amandla; she knows everything about everything and can explain it in a way that Alex never could, even if he had half the knowledge that she does. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alright,” Alex says after he has cleared everything away. Amandla told them to start over, and he is certainly going to do whatever she tells him to. “So we’ve decided to go for volume this time.” Mark is dumping chocolate into bowls, bigger ones this time, since apparently one of their mistakes was not giving the chocolate enough room to crystallize. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>More volume is right, since they are using two pounds worth. It is excessive, they know, but it is a Hail Mary if they’ve ever seen one. Mark pulls out an induction burner to keep the chocolate at working temperature, and Amandla takes charge, grabbing the apple box that Isabelle normally stands on and planting herself at the induction burner perched on the workstation, spatula in hand. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She basically does the entire thing for them, but Alex isn’t complaining. He finds some syringes while Amandla keeps the dark chocolate at the right temperature and Mark works with the white chocolate. They had a bit of a disaster with the white chocolate; apparently, you cannot temper chocolate that has mint extract in it, but they have given up on that front completely.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If it doesn’t temper, who gives a shit?” Alex says, filling a syringe with dark chocolate carefully.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, what if it squidges out?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Squidges?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They fill the molds carefully, using a method that involves syringes and an unused birthday candle and a lot of tapping on the counter. It is very scientific and Alex thinks that he may have to patent it. It might have taken two days, Amandla’s help, and two pounds of chocolate, but by lunchtime they have eight pieces of candy, just in time for Isabelle to come down to the kitchen.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hi!” she says brightly, hugging them both in turn. She took yesterday off to meet with her editor, and she called Alex last night to tell him all about it. For the first time in a long time, she sounded excited about the book, not stressed or anxious or overworked but truly excited, and Alex loved to hear that in her voice. “Are you done?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’re done,” Mark says proudly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You know last night Isabelle asserted that the mold is her intellectual property and we needed to find our own thing,” Alex tells the camera. Isabelle kept asking him for details on the phone last night, so he finally threw her a bone by telling her that they completely co-opted her use of the silicone mold. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh really?” Mark crosses his arms over his chest, frowning at her. “What would you have done?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, it’s easy,” Isabelle says, like they haven’t all seen her in the midst of a Day Four breakdown. “I would have stacked the chocolate in three big layers and then cut them out.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex looks at Mark over her head. “We… did not think of that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She shrugs. “You can’t all be me, can you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They start popping the chocolates out of the molds, and they look absolutely perfect; Alex suddenly realizes why Isabelle does this show over and over even if she looks like she wants to die for a majority of filming.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So let me get this straight,” Isabelle says, taking one chocolate out of Alex’s hand and inspecting it. “You tempered two pounds of chocolate and made eight mints?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s correct,” Alex says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So you made about forty grams of finished product, which is…” She looks up at the ceiling as she does the math in her hand. “A tenth of a pound.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Listen, Isabelle. We were in a rhythm.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s five percent of the chocolate you tempered.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Isabelle!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Amandla comes over and pronounces the chocolate perfect, Alex confessing to Isabelle that she basically did the entire thing. Even so, she seems proud of him, knows how much he was dreading this entire endeavor. And he’s proud of himself. He’ll never do it again, but he would have to admit if asked that it wasn’t the worst thing he has ever done.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You should be my cohost,” Isabelle says as she helps him clean up. “Maybe next time we can do one that’s actually difficult.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, shut up,” he says, flicking a soap bubble in her direction, but he is laughing. As they finish washing dishes, Alex thinks how crazy it is that somehow he could come back from Los Angeles, all sunny and warm and eighty-five degrees, and still feel that his personal source of sunshine is standing in this room next to him, even with the sky cold and gray just outside the window.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>🍯💛</span>
</p><p>
  <b>LunchMeat </b>
  <span>Alex: “Where did you get the sourdough starter?” Isabelle and Jackie: nervous sweating</span>
</p><p>
  <b>George R </b>
  <span>Isabelle is off DIY Kitchen for like 5 minutes and immediately starts committing crimes, she is awakened</span>
</p><p>
  <b>Serena </b>
  <span>Isabelle on Wild Card: “I’m having such a good time.” Alex on DIYK: “This is my nightmare.”</span>
</p><p>
  <b>17 </b>
  <span>This feels like when dad tries to get you ready in the morning instead of mom.</span>
</p><p>
  <b>Parker </b>
  <span>Alex and Mark are like the friends in school that partnered for the project, Amandla is the girl who already finished and keeps helping them, and Isabelle is the teacher telling them that they didn’t follow half the guidelines while they try to convince her that they did</span>
</p><p>
  <b>OutLast </b>
  <span>The second they criticized Isabelle’s chocolate tempering I knew they were in trouble</span>
</p><p>
  <b>Wren Allie </b>
  <span>Isabelle: This seems chaotic. Mark: It’s been chaotic. Alex (the source of the chaos): No, it’s been good.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. what would i do if there wasn't a you?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>so what should i do in the darkness of you<br/>when you light up my moon from july until june<br/>what would i do if there wasn't a you?<br/>would you sing about me like i sing about you?<br/>/ yellow lights by harry hudson</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>At the end of April, Liam becomes a dad.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They all take turns going to their apartment once they are settled in back home to see him, his girlfriend, and their new baby, balloons and flowers and (of course) food in tow. Isabelle goes with Alex; they leave a bunch of casseroles in the freezer and exclaim over how beautiful their son is. Alex holds him for a long time while he sleeps, giving Liam and his girlfriend a chance to rest. Isabelle sits on the couch next to him, watching them both, the baby’s eyelashes fluttering against his tiny cheek as he sleeps.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then she gets home and realizes that her period is a week late.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>To be fair, she’s been busy and hasn’t opened her planner in a few days, but when she does she sees the note she made for herself last month, the one reminding her to buy tampons last week when she assumed she would need them again, and she starts to put the pieces together. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>So she decides to do what she does best and simply ignore it. There are a lot of reasons she could be late. Maybe it’s the stress. Maybe she needs more sleep. Maybe it’s because of the cold she’s been fighting off. She certainly cannot comprehend the other possibility because frankly it is too horrifying for her to think about right now at this point in her life. So she doesn’t think about it. She doesn’t do the math. She just goes about her days, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in her stomach and the anxiety causing a twitch in her right eye.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex knows that something is wrong because he is Alex and there is no one who knows her as soul deep as he does. But he doesn’t press her because he knows her as soul deep as he does, instead choosing to distract her with long conversations about nothing while they are at work and even longer dinners once they are done for the day. They talk about the book and Alex’s chef’s knife and the Thanksgiving series. They talk about Alex’s upcoming birthday and whether he is going to travel this year. (He’s not; work is too crazy.) They even talk a little bit about Nicky and Lauren, as easily as the two of them know how. They do not talk about the seed that has planted itself in Isabelle’s brain and is threatening to sprout and grow, taking over not just her brain but the rest of her life. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>If there is one good thing happening in Isabelle’s life, it is that for the first time since she started, the book is coming along. She doesn’t have a title yet, but more than half of the recipes are fully completed (a quarter of them have even been photographed) and the other half are coming along nicely. Alex came up with the idea of making her own recipe index, not organized by page number but instead a graph, one axis the length of time the recipe takes and the other its difficulty. He makes her promise to fully credit him in the acknowledgements, not for the matrix but for “being your inspiration and the light of your life over the years.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She laughs when he says it, but exaggeration though it may be, she cannot deny the effect he has had on her and her cooking. That is why, a couple of days after they go to Liam’s, she wanders into Alex’s office with purpose, planting herself in the chair across from his desk. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I have a question,” she says, even though it is one of her biggest peeves when someone states that they have a question instead of just asking the question. But she is a little nervous about asking it; she doesn’t know how Alex is going to react, whether he’ll even say yes. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Shoot,” he says, pushing back from his desk and crossing an ankle over his knee. “But I’ve got to say, if you ask me to film another episode of Bitch Kitchen, my answer is going to be a resounding no and there is absolutely nothing that you can do to change my mind.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Tell you what. If you agree to what I’m about to ask you, you will never have to film Bitch Kitchen again.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well then, yes, absolutely.” He grins at her. “I’ll do whatever you want.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Seriously, Alex.” She takes a deep breath. “I was wondering if…” She decides blurting is probably the best strategy. “I was wondering if you would write the intro for my book.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Wait, actually?” He drops his leg, leaning forward and putting his elbows on the desk, looking at her intently.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know it’s a pain and you don’t like writing but it would mean a lot to me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll do it,” he interrupts her, not even skipping a beat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alex, if you’re too busy or you don’t want to-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll do it,” he repeats.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are you sure?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Of course I’m sure. When do you need it by?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When Isabelle’s editor asked her who was going to write the introduction, she honestly never even considered anyone but Alex. He has been by her side since the start of her career, has never failed to encourage her to push herself. He always remembers to ask her what she is working on at home, what new things she wants to try or a skill she wants to perfect. He witnesses her triumphs and her failures, her Bitch Kitchen meltdowns and her successes alike. He knows what she needs before he asks, sometimes before she even knows what she needs, and he always helps without complaint. (Well, most of the time without complaint.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When Alex ends up writing a book, she is going to insist that she write the introduction. She has a lot of things to say. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They go out to eat that night at The Greek, ordering dolmades and grilled haloumi and keftedes and passing them back and forth across the table. The restaurant is warm and bright, and Alex gets a little buzzed on red wine, which must be what prompts Isabelle to ask point blank a question that normally she tries to avoid.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So how are things with Lauren?” Normally she just asks how Lauren is; she has never asked him how their relationship is going because that’s what it is now, a relationship, and she hasn’t really processed that fact yet. He calls her his girlfriend now, and sometimes when Isabelle goes into his closet to steal yet another t-shirt or crewneck, she finds Lauren’s clothes. Her stuff is in his bathroom, and (most egregiously) she keeps food in his fridge, so now Isabelle has to ask before she takes anything.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A look flashes quickly across Alex’s face, so quickly that Isabelle almost misses it, and she immediately thinks that she must have imagined it. She doesn’t know what it was: maybe just shock that she asked. He takes a sip of wine, putting his glass down before he answers. “Things are good,” he says, a little cautiously. “It’s not like we’re getting engaged. You know.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do I?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex sighs, leaning forward, the same way he did when Isabelle asked him for help earlier, but this time his expression is very different. “I’m not a relationship person, Isabelle,” he says, his voice low like Lauren might be right around the corner, sitting at the next table listening to this conversation. “I’m not good at them. I have never particularly liked them before. And I’m thirty, for fuck’s sake. I’ve gotten used to doing what I want to do when I want to do it. I didn’t realize until I had to start communicating that I’m not good at communicating.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Isabelle pushes a stuffed grape leaf across her plate with her fork. “That’s not true though.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What do you mean?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You are good at communicating. I know what you’re doing basically every second that we aren’t together. And I know that because you text me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s different.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How? How is it different?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex sighs again, heavier this time. “I don’t know. Talking to you is always easy. You’re not asking me why I was at work late or who I’m on the phone with or why I can’t do something this weekend. You just… get it. You get what our jobs are like, you get how crazy our lives are.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Doesn’t Lauren? I mean… she’s a chef.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“She…” Alex stops himself. “It’s not her specifically. It’s just the whole construct in general. I’m not good at it. And what’s worse, I don’t know if I care or not. Is that bad?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Maybe we just want what we can’t have,” Isabelle says, forking a meatball off Alex’s plate and cutting it in half. “Would you rather be ignored?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex reaches across the table, touching Isabelle’s hand, stilling it. He rarely brings up Nicky, and Isabelle rarely talks about her relationship with him, but they both know that it is far from perfect. “Iz,” he says softly. “I didn’t mean to… I wasn’t talking about…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s fine,” she says quickly, knowing she doesn’t need to say anything for Alex to know that she was talking about her own relationship. She’s not unhappy, but sometimes she wonders what it would be like to be with someone who texts her all the time, who shows up to her work parties and engagement dinners and her own goddamn birthday party, for fuck’s sake. She always thought that she would like having her own space, her own apartment, her own life until she realized what that actually looked like. “I think this conversation kind of got away from us.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex laughs, leaning back and grabbing the other half of the meatball Isabelle stole, popping it into his mouth. “My point was… Lauren is fine. My relationship is fine. I’m fine. Everything is fine.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You know, if you say fine that many times, it starts to lose all meaning.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fine. Fine, fine, fine.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alexander!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Isabelle might not like the fact that she has to be careful about what she takes out of Alex’s fridge (and she certainly does not want to repeat the Bathroom Condom Incident of 2020), but at least she doesn’t have to worry about Alex. Fine might have lost all meaning, but around her at least, Alex seems better than fine. Now that the April Fools episodes are behind them, he isn’t stressed, is back to his normal, happy, easy-going self. Isabelle doesn’t spend any time around him and Lauren together, so she doesn’t know whether he is like that all the time, but she certainly doesn’t see anything different and she’s fine with that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So it is kind of inexplicable to her that a couple of days after their red wine dinner at The Greek, she ends up going out with just Nicky, but Alex and Lauren too. Technically it was Alex’s idea; he was the one who floated the idea of the two of them getting a drink on Friday night, but then Lauren texted him and Nicky texted her and things were weirdly hanging there in the air between them and all of a sudden the idea of the four of them going together was out there and neither of them could take it back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They end up at Death &amp; Company, which is dark and moody and just loud enough that the awkward silences won’t be too noticeable. It’s a gorgeous space, dark walls and huge mirrors behind the bar that make it seem bigger than it is, even with the low ceilings that make it look and feel like a speakeasy. You may have to shell out twenty bucks for a cocktail, but it is always worth it. They are delicious and fancy and will get you smashed as hell, which is exactly what you need when you are on a double date with your best friend and his girlfriend who does not seem to like you all that much.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>(Within good reason maybe. Isabelle hasn’t talked to Alex about falling asleep in his bed on her birthday, but she imagines that it may have been something of a cockblock.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Thank God Isabelle can drink; she got her period this morning, better late than never, and she is really hoping that she will quickly forget about the absolute panic she has been feeling over the last couple of days. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So… tell me why we are doing this again?” Nicky asks as they walk up to the bar. She honestly doesn’t have a good answer for him; it took a lot to even convince him to go out at all tonight, much less with Alex and Lauren. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Because we are,” she says shortly. She didn’t tell him about the pregnancy scare, and she isn’t really sure why. Maybe because she thought he wouldn’t take it seriously; maybe because she was scared of his reaction. Regardless, she is trying real hard to put it behind her and never think about it again. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They duck through the door, waiting a second for their eyes to adjust to the darkness of the bar before they see Alex and Lauren, tucked into a booth towards the back. As soon as he sees her, Alex stands up, taking a step towards her as if to kiss her on the cheek but then he hesitates, like he thought better of it, and he just shakes Nicky’s hand, waiting for them to sit down across from Lauren before he sits down.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Isabelle shrugs her coat off, stuffing it against the wall next to Nicky. “So…” She clears her throat. “What’s new?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not much,” Alex says. “At least not in the three hours since I last saw you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I was talking to Lauren,” Isabelle says, making a face at him across the table. “Obviously.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And that is how Isabelle finds out that Lauren is thinking of moving to Los Angeles and already asked Alex to come with her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>To be honest, she kind of blacks out in the middle of the conversation, but it starts with Lauren saying she applied for a job at Providence as a long shot and ends with Isabelle getting up from the table wordlessly and going up to the bar because if she doesn’t get out of that conversation, she might smash Alex’s glass on the floor.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey,” comes a voice from behind her as she sits down on a barstool, grabbing a menu even though she already knows what she wants, and she jumps, dropping it on the ground. Alex picks it up, handing it back to her as he slides onto the stool next to her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re moving to Los Angeles?” she bursts out.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No.” Alex lowers his voice, even though they are too far away from the table and it is far too loud for anyone to hear their conversation. “I don’t know. No.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You love New York.” Isabelle catches the eye of a bartender and orders a Snapdragon when he comes over, which is a twenty-five dollar drink but fuck it. It is most certainly a mezcal sort of night. “It’s your favorite place in the world. And what about work?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know, I know,” he says quickly, sliding a bar napkin in circles. “I can’t imagine leaving.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So don’t. You guys have only been dating for two seconds.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Iz,” he says, turning to her. “Calm down. I never said I was going.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But she asked.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah.” He sighs. “She did.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You didn’t tell me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It just happened!” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The bartender comes back with Isabelle’s drink, and she knows that for twenty-five dollars she should probably savor it a little, but instead downs half of it at once. “You’re my best friend,” she says, not looking at him. “You can’t just leave.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Be real,” he says. “You’ll never be able to get rid of me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That’s the last part of the night that Isabelle remembers clearly. The rest of it is a fuzzy mixture of tequila, darts, avoiding Lauren, and (inexplicably towards the end of the night) karaoke. Nicky and Lauren seem to get along fine; apparently her brother is an investment banker so she is able to ask more pointed questions about Nicky’s job than Isabelle ever has.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It is around one in the morning, four or five drinks in, and Isabelle needs a cigarette. She goes out the back into the alley, Alex offering to come with her so that she doesn’t get kidnapped, and she is about at the point where Alex has to both light her cigarette for her and keep one arm around her so that she doesn’t tip over sideways. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Maybe you should be done, half pint,” he says, pulling her over to a stack of empty palettes and forcing her to sit down.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, yeah.” She rolls her eyes but practically falls over backwards and he has to steady her, sitting down next to her. “I just needed to let off a little steam. You know.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Speaking of,” he says casually, but she’s not drunk enough that she doesn’t realize exactly what he’s doing. The man is not subtle. “What’s been going on with you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She is, unfortunately, drunk enough that the words come out of her mouth without thought. “I thought I was pregnant.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For a second, it sounds like Alex stops breathing, and he pulls back to look at her. “You thought you were… Oh. Okay. But you’re not.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Did you see how much I drank tonight?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, yes. I mean, duh. That’s, uh… that’s good, right? That you’re not pregnant? I mean you don’t want… Or if you do, that’s good too. I don’t…” He shakes his head. “I don’t really know what I’m saying.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You don’t say.” She hands him her cigarette so that he can take a couple of drags off it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Isabelle spends forty hours a week with Alex at work and usually another ten on top of that at the very least, and they have never run out of things to talk about, even when one of them is cranky or tired or throwing a Bitch Kitchen fit. But the silence that sits between them now feels awkward, like for the first time in five years of friendship Isabelle doesn’t know what to say. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well,” she says finally as Alex finishes the cigarette and stamps it out on the pavement. “We are learning a lot of things tonight.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah. We really are.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The night ends with Isabelle holding Lauren’s hair as she throws up in the bathroom, which is honestly a lot closer than Isabelle feels like they need to be, especially if she is moving to California and taking Isabelle’s best friend with her. She tells Nicky that she just wants to go home, taking a separate Uber home to her apartment, and she ends up crying herself to sleep, too drunk or tired or anxious to even be able to articulate why. </span>
</p><p>
  <b>Isabelle Makes Starbursts | DIY Kitchen</b>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hi, I’m Isabelle, I’m in the test kitchen, and today I’m making gourmet Starbursts.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She has to restrain herself from rolling her eyes on camera. This is going to be a major Bitch Kitchen episode, she can already tell. It is late on a Thursday, she has been in meetings all morning, she has a major headache, and she has yet to get Alex a present for his birthday even though it is quickly approaching. However, Dayo has promised her that if she just gets through this episode, she can have three easy ones in a row, so that’s something at least.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There is a tower of Starbursts in front of her, regular and gummy and mini and tropical. She only has to make the four original flavors, and there is a big bowl full of them for her to try and dissect and throw at Alex across the kitchen when she needs help. Sure enough, he shows up immediately after she starts filming to pick as many yellow Starbursts out of the bowl as he can, stuffing five in his mouth at once.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I already hate this one. It’s gonna be so hard.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, it’s garbage,” Alex says through a mouthful of candy, but he pats her on the back. “You’ve got this though. You’re gonna nail it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Weirdly, things have been fine between them ever since the night at Death &amp; Company. They haven’t talked about Alex moving or Isabelle being pregnant; she certainly isn’t bringing either of those things up if he’s not. He texted her the morning after, asking her how she felt and if everything was okay between them, and she assured him that she was good and they were good and everything was good. And it is. She just wishes she could stop thinking about the fact that there is a girl out there who wants Alex to move three thousand miles away with her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jackie and Mark and Amandla filter over to give their opinion on Starbursts, which is resoundingly good. Alex is still apparently the only person in the entire world who doesn’t like pink Starbursts which Jackie promptly points out, inciting a bickering match that is still going on when they go back to their own stations.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Isabelle spends the rest of the afternoon measuring a single Starburst, pulling one apart to see if it stretches or breaks, reading the ingredients, and doing research on the test kitchen computer to see if she can glean any information about what exactly a Starburst is. (She can’t.) From the way that a Starburst tears when you pull it, she deduces that it’s a cooked sugar sort of thing, and she knows from the Skittles episode that getting the right texture is going to be something out of a horror movie. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She spends the night looking at some books, trying to figure out how exactly to make taffy because that is probably the closest she is going to get, and by the time she goes to bed that night she thinks that she might be able to get this whole thing done in two days.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She starts Day Two by immediately fucking up by forgetting to drain the gelatin sheets before adding them to the taffy mixture. When she puts it in the KitchenAid to try to mix it together, it refuses to mix and she almost has a breakdown before she realizes her mistake and starts over.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Three test batches later, she would have to admit that is not feeling so great about this whole thing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The first couple of batches she makes are not flavored; she figures if she can get the texture down, the flavoring will be the easy part. But getting the texture down is a bitch. The first batch doesn’t set up at all, even after she molds it into a loaf pan and lets it sit on the counter for an hour; it has a really soft, marshmallow like texture which is certainly not what you want for a Starburst. She adds more cornstarch and cooks the taffy to a higher temperature for the second batch, and it is noticeably firmer than the first batch but still not great.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex wanders over now and then throughout the day to see how she is doing. He is working on something involving a whole fish right behind her, and she has to stop herself from constantly turning around to talk to him. He is a loud worker, always yelling something across the kitchen or dropping baking sheets or muttering to himself, and it feels almost comforting to know that he is right there in case she needs help, even if she doesn’t ask for it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s been a while since I’ve had Alex behind me during one of these episodes, and it’s very distracting,” she says to the camera after he throws a clove of garlic over her shoulder to get her attention.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ayoh,” he says from his workstation, and they have to take a break so Josh can stop laughing long enough to hold the camera still. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She takes a break to figure out the flavors, deciding to use fruit extract until she looks at a Starbursts box and realizes that it says that there are real fruit juices in the candy. That throws a bit of a wrench into her plans, but she figures it out quickly, spending another hour cooking down fruit and juicing it so that she too will have fresh fruit juice in her Starbursts. She figures that she can add extract to it to make the color brighter, and it is a relief to have that part worked out at least.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She makes a third test batch, adding cherry juice this time. Alex is done for the day, sitting off to the side by Jen and drinking water out of his Yeti. “If you could just show a little more energy,” he says as she fashions a taffy pulling machine out of the KitchenAid and a dough hook.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You try making a Starburst, Alex.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Absolutely not.” He beams at her innocently. “That’s what you’re here for.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He tries a piece of the taffy before she dumps it into a loaf pan. It turned from a pretty red color into a weird dusty mauve as she is pulling it, and it is certainly not appetizing. Alex inspects his piece before he takes a bite. “Yeah…” he says hesitantly. “This ain’t it, bud.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ugh.” She sits down, putting her head in her hands. “I know.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You know you can get tart cherry juice concentrate from Whole Foods. I think that might help.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Really?” She looks up at him. “God, you’re a lifesaver.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, I know.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She doesn’t see Alex at all that weekend; she is incredibly behind on laundry, needs to get a couple more pages of her book to her editor, and has a mini breakdown about everything she has done on the episode in general. She does spend a few hours on FaceTime with him on Saturday as she folds laundry, and he promises her that he will be around to help with whatever she needs next week.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s going to be four-dayer, Alex. I can feel it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“As a Bitch Kitchen veteran myself-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alex!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He laughs, the sound instantly cheering her up. “I promise it’s going to be fine. If I can make an Andes fucking Mint, you can make a Starburst.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Monday, Day Three, is worse than anything she could have imagined. She makes four test batches, alternating flavors just to keep it interesting, and all of them turn out like crap. The first, where she substitutes pink food coloring for fruit juice because some more research informed her that she is using too much liquid, cooks it to a lower temperature, and cuts the pulling time in half, is way too firm and has more stretch than she would like. The second, where she only uses half the amount of gelatin, tastes good but is way too soft. The third, cooked hotter and pulled more, is way too hard, way too sour, and could practically pull out a filling. Alex and Mark come over to try that one, Alex muttering “don’t bite it, Mark. Do not bite it” after getting one stuck in his teeth. The fourth batch (no gelatin, more cornstarch and coconut oil) sets up immediately before she even has a chance to press it into the pan.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s just great,” she mutters, banging it on the counter. “Can’t make a Starburst, but at least I can make fucking hard candy.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She has changed every variable and tried every iteration that she can possibly think of, and at the end of the third day she has absolutely nothing to show for it. What a shitty Monday. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Go home,” Alex says, coming over and leaning on the counter. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I can’t,” she says, heaving a big sigh and sitting down on a stool that he drags over for her. “I don’t know where to go from here.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex takes the block of hard candy from her, breaking off a piece and tasting it. It’s good; she knows it’s good. But orange hard candy is certainly not an orange Starburst and she doesn’t have a damn clue what she did wrong. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He grabs another stool and a pack of Starbursts, holding it close and squinting at it to read the ingredients. “Well, the third ingredient is palm kernel oil, so maybe you should up the fat even more? Up the fat, lower temperature, maybe less gelatin.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Isabelle puts her head down on her arms. Honestly, she hit a Day Four attitude in the middle of Day Two when she was making her third futile test batch. “Guys…” she hears Alex say softly, putting his arm over her shoulders. “Maybe we should shut it down.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thanks,” she says once they’re gone. “Normally by the end of Day Three, I know where I’ve gone wrong. But this time…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You don’t,” Alex finishes. “And that’s fine. You’ll come back tomorrow and you’ll try it again and you’ll figure it out and then you’ll never have to make a goddamn Starburst again.” He cracks off another piece of candy, putting it into his mouth. “This stuff is good as hell though. You could totally market this.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So she shows up bright and early the next day (Day fucking Four), trying not to hate everything that she is doing before she does it. Alex is right though. She needs more fat and more cornstarch and if she balances it out with less gelatin, maybe it will make a difference.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So for the eighth or ninth time since she started this episode (she has lost count at this point), she mixes together cornstarch and sugar and water and coconut oil and corn syrup, changing amounts and measuring carefully instead of eyeballing it and eyeing the thermometer as it creeps up by incremental degrees. She makes strawberry this time, pulls it for sixth seconds before folding it into a loaf pan, covering it, and pushing it aside with a big sigh. If this doesn’t work, she doesn’t know what she’ll do next.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She has meetings all day about what next year is going to look like, even though it is still six months away. Her plan has always been to take some time off after the book comes out, travel around and go on talk shows and have a book tour. Dayo told her that she can do whatever she wants, both because they are friends and because having her on television is just as good for their brand as having her on their YouTube channel is. While she is waiting for the taffy to set, she spends an hour in his office, discussing timelines and schedules.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s too hard. When she goes to check it, she can tell as soon as she pulls off the sheet pan covering the top, that it’s not right. Maybe it set too much or maybe it needs to sit longer, will soften up somehow, inexplicably. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex is hovering somewhere behind her, looking a little nervous, like she’s going to freak out or throw something. But Isabelle just takes a deep breath, doesn’t chuck her spatula on the floor like she wants to, and pushes the loaf pan to the side without taking the taffy out of it. Josh’s eyes are wide behind his camera; he has seen her in this position a couple of times (Skittles, Doritos, Pop Rocks, goddamn jelly beans). </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She takes a second to think before speaking. “Okay,” she says finally. “I am going to try it one more time. More gelatin, more cornstarch, more fat. If that doesn’t work, we are just going to move forward and stop tweaking the recipe and make all four flavors anyways.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jen nods. Technically, Isabelle is supposed to check with her to see if it is close enough, if she is allowed to be done, but she has done this so many times that she has basically taken over complete creative control of the show. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>So she does it one more time. She mixes the taffy, cooks it to 265 degrees, adds the gelatin, pulls it, folds it into a loaf pan, and lets it sit for an hour, the same thing that she has done nine times in a row over the last four days. After this, she will never look at another Starburst ever again, she swears to God.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When it is time to look at it, she is almost afraid to, even though she knows in the long run that it doesn’t matter. She’s a pastry chef, not a candy maker. And it’s not like she is performing brain surgery. It’s just a Starburst. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex appears by her side, grabbing the loaf pan from her and dumping the taffy out onto the counter. It doesn’t shatter or make a sound or otherwise do anything that would make Isabelle think it’s automatically a disaster. She is able to roll it out, and maybe it is a skosh too soft, but it feels close. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex tries a piece. “Iz,” he says, swallowing. “Whatever you did do more of it. You’re so close.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, no,” she says, making a face. “This is it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, then you nailed it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She laughs. “Thanks, Alex.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She spends the rest of the day making the other three flavors, which is incredibly time consuming. They sit for another hour (Isabelle truly feels like all she has been doing for the entirety of her life has been mixing and boiling and pulling and sitting, the constant fucking sitting and waiting), and Alex comes back over, right there to provide moral support and a second opinion.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For some reason, they are as hard as a rock, even though Isabelle didn’t do anything differently from the last batch. “Well,” Alex says, trying to be optimistic. “If you put it in your mouth for like thirty seconds before you bite it, it softens up a bit.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh my God,” Isabelle groans.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Look at it this way. You nailed Now &amp; Laters.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She sits at her workstation for a while, dejectedly cutting wax paper into little rectangles and coloring them in with bright pink and orange and yellow and red Sharpies that Alex dug up for her. The Starbursts might suck, but at least the wrappers look great.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay,” she says as it starts to dim in the kitchen and the film crew is getting antsy. “So. Because I am a prisoner of my own mind, I’m going to try one more time tomorrow. I’ll do less cornstarch and more oil and cook it all to a lower temperature. Also to make it easier on all of us, I’m going to gather some friends and do all four flavors at once because it’s really time consuming to do them one after another and honestly if I have to do it like that again, I’ll probably end up quitting.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jen signs off on her plan and releases them all for the evening. For the first time ever in DIY Kitchen history, she is going into Day Five, and she’ll be damned if those five days turn into six.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>🍯💛</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex is waiting for her in the lobby of One World Trade the next morning, which he only does if he knows she is having a bad week, and he has her tea in hand. Bless his heart, the man tries. “So listen,” he says, before she even has a chance to say hello. “I talked Dayo into letting me spend the morning helping you. So whatever you need, I’ve got you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He’s letting you do that?” Isabelle asks as they get on the elevator. She takes a sip of tea, which is steaming hot and actually good, although she can tell that Alex went a little too light on the tunnel. She certainly isn’t going to complain. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I think he might be a little worried that you might burn the test kitchen to the ground,” Alex says, shrugging and pressing seventy-seven. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, if this doesn’t work, no promises.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex helps her get everything ready, setting up four stations with KitchenAids, hand mixers, bowls, loaf pans, spatulas, and fruit extract as she wanders around the seventy-eighth floor to see who is there and has time to help her. Mark, Amandla, and Jack are all able to help her, and they follow her downstairs looking a little nervous about what they might be getting themselves into.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay, everyone stay close and do what I say,” Isabelle says as they line up at Isabelle’s workstation. (Alex and Mark got in a scuffle over who got the yellow KitchenAid; Alex won and Mark is sulking in front of the light blue one.) “Not you, Amandla, you can do whatever you want.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She explains what they need to do, but she isn’t sure she does that great a job at it and she’s equally unsure of whether it matters how good her instructions are. As the four of them start melting their gelatin, she mixes together the taffy, adding more coconut oil and cutting the cornstarch in half, watching the thermometer carefully to make sure it doesn’t creep up over 260 degrees. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It is all going fine until suddenly it’s not. She divides the taffy mix between their bowls, but she pours too much into Alex’s and he has to dive in with a ladle to fish it out and dump it in Jack’s instead. None of the gelatin incorporates at all for some reason, a problem she had never encountered in the fifteen goddamn times she previously made this recipe. Alex’s taffy gets caught in the beaters of his hand mixer, spinning around and around as Jack laughs hysterically next to him. (Amandla and Mark join in, Alex trying to hold back a smile until Isabelle starts laughing too and they have to all take a minute to calm down.) </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What’s happening over there?” Isabelle calls at one point. She is bent over Mark’s hand mixer, trying to get the taffy unstuck and back into his bowl. Amandla has wandered over to the stove, taking her bowl and her mixer with her and setting the entire contraption on top of a pot of boiling water, hoping that the heat will make the gelatin incorporate into the taffy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Uh…” Amandla pauses for a second. “Nothing good!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Mark, is that hot?” Josh asks, as Isabelle finally gets Mark’s taffy back on track and he starts pulling it. He was at the stove before Amandla, just pulled his bowl off the heat, and it looks like it is steaming a little. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s extremely hot,” Mark says. “I’m burning my fingers with every stretch. But you don’t see me complaining like Alex was.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The colors look great, and Isabelle finally decides that there is nothing more that can be done at this point. She tells them all to dump the taffy into their loaf pans so that they can let it set, but she isn’t feeling all that positive about what they just did.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thank you guys so much,” she says. She feels like she is sweating a little. She needs to drink some water and maybe lie down.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That was the most stressful thing I have ever done,” Amandla says. “Is that how you feel all the time?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I feel like I let you down,” Jack says, lying flat on his back on the floor. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You didn’t,” Isabelle says. “Trust me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>An hour later, Isabelle dumps all of the taffy out onto her workstation. The cherry one (which was, of course, Amandla’s) looks and feels great. The rest are all too hard or too soft, but she truly doesn’t care. Having one color that both feels and tastes like a Starburst is good enough for her. Alex comes back over, helping her roll it out, cut it into tiny squares, even sits down to help her wrap some, although he proved pretty clearly in his Bitch Kitchen episode that he is particularly horrible at wrapping. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So you’re all done?” he asks her, hovering over one of her Starbursts. “No matter what?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, I’m done.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He pops it in his mouth, smiles at her. “Iz, it’s fantastic.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Honestly, I would rather temper chocolate than do that again.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yikes,” Alex says, putting down the Starburst that he just finished wrapping and patting her on the back. “Don’t let Mark hear you say that. He’ll make you do it, no question.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She puts her head on his shoulder, looking at the small amount of product spread out in front of her that she has to show for a whole lot of work. Maybe it seems better now that it’s over (she is  certain that this episode will go down in DIY Kitchen as one of the most chaotic of all time), but she is proud of herself. Sure, it sucked. Sure, she had a mini breakdown (more than one, depending on who you ask). Sure, she didn’t get it completely right. But she finished, she had her friends by her side, and most importantly, she will never ever have to touch a Starburst ever again for as long as she lives. There’s always a bright side, she thinks. Maybe Alex’s jar two-thirds attitude isn’t such crap after all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>🍯💛</span>
</p><p>
  <b>Nora Queen </b>
  <span>Isabelle: “I’m not gonna make this anymore.” Me: looks suspiciously at the thirteen minutes left of the video</span>
</p><p>
  <b>LMMV </b>
  <span>Isabelle: messes up. Alex: is behind her minding his own business. Isabelle: “Damnit, he distracted me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <b>DND </b>
  <span>This series should be called “Pastry Chef Slowly Descends Into Madness”</span>
</p><p>
  <b>Just Sara </b>
  <span>“I dunno, it just feels weirdly on the right track.” Isabelle 10 minutes into a 40 minute video. Oh honey…</span>
</p><p>
  <b>Eevee </b>
  <span>I love that Alex decides how he’ll react depending on whether or not Isabelle is going to try another batch.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. you’ll miss your train and come stay with me</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>gracie, this one is for you. without you i would be even more of a disaster than i already am. thank you for all your help, encouragement, and for essentially finishing this fic for me. i love you 3000!</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>one of these days you'll miss your train and come stay with me<br/>we'll have drinks and talk about things and any excuse to stay awake with you<br/>and you'd sleep here, i'd sleep there but then the heating may be down again<br/>we'd be good, we'd be great together<br/>/ goodnight n go by ariana grande</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>Knife Skills | Chef Showdown</b>
</p><p>“Mince the garlic.”</p><p>“Okay.”</p><p>“Then macédoine the sweet potato.”</p><p>“Do I have to say that word?”</p><p>“And finally julienne the jicama.”</p><p>“Got it.”</p><p>It is surprising to a lot of people based on his rather chaotic Internet show, but Alex was classically trained and has more restaurant experience than almost anyone else in the kitchen, so he is feeling pretty good about the fact that the next chefs’ competition is about knife skills. After they explain the rules to him, they ask him how he feels about it. </p><p>“I feel great,” he says, winking at Isabelle, who is sitting on the stool he usually occupies while she is filming. She talked him into letting her go first today while he was still in his office trying to talk the building managers into letting him set up composting stations in the test kitchen (so far, he has not had any luck). He knows she did it because she has zero confidence in her knife skills, even though as he has told her one hundred times, it truly doesn’t mean anything.</p><p>She sticks her tongue out at him, but she’s smiling. </p><p>“The real question,” Jackie says from where she is sitting next to Isabelle, flicking pieces of jicama at Alex, “is who you think is going to win.”</p><p>“Amandla,” Alex says quickly. He has said it a hundred times and he will say it again: the woman could cook any of them under the table in a heartbeat.</p><p>Jackie takes offense because she is Jackie, and she throws another piece of jicama at his head which he manages to catch and eat. “Okay.” He rolls out his shoulders and cracks his neck like he’s back playing football in high school. “What’s the time to beat so far?”</p><p>Tara, their director for today, checks her notes, flipping a page. “Mark got four minutes and forty-five seconds,” she says. </p><p>“So not Isabelle or Jackie.”</p><p>“Shut up!”</p><p>“On your mark… get set… go!”</p><p>Alex grabs the garlic, picking up the knife he is using today, which is his trusty old cleaver that got him through thousands of knife cuts in culinary school. It is huge and it looks way too big to be julienning jicama or mincing anything, but it works. They told him that he has to try to talk as he is working, which is not a problem for Alex since he can maintain a verbal stream of consciousness about literally anything.</p><p>“There are different ways to do this,” he explains, leaning down over his cutting board. He can already feel his neck starting to crick; this is a countertop for ants and normally it doesn’t bother him, but he is really feeling it now. “Most people do a rough chop, but it’s faster to put it on the flat side, cut horizontally through towards the root, make slits like you would with an onion, and you have a perfect dice. Plus it is possible to rough chop too much, which basically bruises all of the flavor right out of there.”</p><p>He can see on Isabelle’s phone timer, which she set up in front of him, that it only takes him thirty-six seconds to finish the garlic, pushing it to the side of his cutting board and out of his way. </p><p>It has been years and years since Alex has macédoined anything, but it is basically just a small dice. It is incredibly finicky and it takes a long time and it is difficult, but they never said that it has to be perfect. Alex shaves off the peel of the sweet potato, rotating his knife around all the bumps and crannies carefully, not wanting to waste anything.</p><p>“You know, Isabelle and Jackie squared off the entire thing,” Tara says casually.</p><p>“Wait, what?” Alex looks up, cutting the ends of the sweet potato off so that he can cut it into strips. “That definitely seems like cheating.”</p><p>“Hey, they never said anything about yield,” Jackie says defiantly, like she is daring Alex to challenge her more. </p><p>By the time he finishes the macédoine, scooping up the pile of diced sweet potato and dumping it into the empty bowl sitting in front of him, the timer is at two minutes and thirty-seven seconds, and he will have to really hustle if he wants to beat Mark.</p><p>“Let me guess,” Alex says as he cuts the jicama in half. “You squared this off too.”</p><p>“Does it matter?” Isabelle asks. Normally she gets a little cranky when she’s not the best at something, but she has been in a better mood lately. Alex isn’t sure why. Maybe it is because the Starbursts episode is over; maybe it’s because the snow is gone and it is spring and New York is finally warming up. Whatever the reason is, Alex will take it, because she has been especially cranky ever since she found out that there was a possibility that Alex might leave this city that he loves so much. </p><p>She has been asking him about it for a couple of weeks, ever since the admittedly disastrous double date when Lauren blurted out, for some godforsaken reason, that she wanted Alex to move across the country with her.</p><p>Lauren had only sprung it on him earlier that day. He knew that she had talked to a couple of chefs that she knows on the West Coast, that they had floated the possibility of having her come work with them. Frankly, Alex can’t imagine why anyone would ever want to leave this city, not even to go somewhere where it is warm and sunny all the time. They are just sitting at Alex’s kitchen table, looking out at the rooftops around them, when she drops the bomb that Providence wants to hire her and Los Angeles has plenty of fine dining restaurants that would love to have Alex as their executive chef.</p><p>At first, he thinks she is joking. “Sure, Lau,” he says. “They would love to hire the guy who hasn’t stepped foot in a restaurant kitchen in six years.”</p><p>“I’m being serious,” she says, pouring him more coffee. He glances at his watch. It is only seven o’clock; he still has plenty of time to get to work, even if he does take the later train. But it certainly doesn’t seem like enough time to be having this conversation. “You’re more talented than most of the chefs I know. You should think about it.”</p><p>“Can we talk about this later?” He grabs a piece of toast, holding it between his teeth as he shrugs his coat on and grabs his bag. “I’m gonna be late.”</p><p>He isn’t, but he can’t think about the fact that the girl he has been dating for about half a year just brought up the idea of him moving away from his home and his job and his friends, and not just away but three thousand miles away. He means to talk to Isabelle about it, but when he gets into the office he immediately starts working on the intro for her book and he forgets about it until he goes home and Lauren brings it up again. He doesn’t feel like he needs to ask her not to say anything about it at dinner, but apparently he should have because suddenly she is saying it and Isabelle is looking across the table at him like he punched her in the face.</p><p>And then she drops the pregnancy bomb on him like it’s nothing.</p><p>If he was freaked out about her engagement changing their friendship, it was nothing compared to the white hot flash of panic that streaks through his mind at the thought of her suddenly being a mother. That would certainly change the dynamic of their friendship. And she just blurts it out like she’s not freaked out about it, like it’s something that she’s been thinking about.</p><p>The very short, very weird conversation that they have about it in the back alley behind Death &amp; Company is the only time they speak of it, but it has been sitting heavily in Alex’s mind ever since that night. Someday, maybe soon, she is going to be a wife. Someday she might be a mom. They are concepts that Alex can’t get his head around. </p><p>Unlike Alex, Isabelle has taken the opposite approach, asking him whether he is moving to Los Angeles every single day, sometimes multiple times a day like he wouldn’t immediately tell her the second he made up his mind one way or the other. And he hasn’t, not really, although the rational part of him knows that he can’t leave this place. But sometimes when he can’t sleep, he thinks about the fact that one day soon he is going to lose his best friend, and maybe he just isn’t supposed to be here anymore. </p><p>Needless to say, he has no idea where the fuck his life is heading.</p><p>He shakes his head, finishing up with the jicama and glancing at the clock. Four minutes and twenty-one seconds. “Yes!” he says, raising his arms over his head triumphantly. “I win!”</p><p>“Well, Amandla hasn’t gone yet,” Jackie says snappishly. She must have really screwed up.</p><p>“Okay, fine. I beat Mark. That’s something.”</p><p>In the end, Amandla wins, beating Alex by a solid thirty seconds. He is fine with coming in second, Mark right behind. Liam clocks in at fourth, followed by Jackie, Leven, and Isabelle, who is dead last but seems fine with it.</p><p>“It’s not like I expected to win,” she says to Alex later. “I mean, I didn’t expect to be last, but what can you do?”</p><p>“You are taking this surprisingly well,” Alex says. He is supposed to be cleaning his office; he has been promising himself for weeks that he will do it as soon as he gets longer than five free minutes, but now that time is here and he is finding himself completely unmotivated. “I seem to remember someone who spiked a spoon into the floor when she lost to me at the snack competition a few months back.”</p><p>“That person seems very cool.”</p><p>“You could say that. You could also say that they are ultra-competitive.”</p><p>Isabelle laughs. “Well, competition breeds innovation or whatever the fuck.”</p><p>“Inspiring.” Alex finds a stack of paper buried on his desk, notes about Italy that he was going to use to try to convince Dayo that he should be allowed to go there this year for a Wild Card episode about olive oil that would conveniently fall over his birthday. He never got around to it and he’s not really sure why. He goes somewhere every year for his birthday. But this year, he barely even thought about it until it was already too late, maybe because he was just too busy and maybe because the Lauren Los Angeles thing really threw him off his game. </p><p>He shoves it in a drawer. Maybe he’ll go eventually, see how olive oil is made and then spend the rest of his trip eating his way through southern Italy. He is still bitter about the fact that Jackie and Leven got to go for the Great Mozzarella Tour of 2019, although he did get to go to Hawaii for a food tour so he can’t complain too much. If anyone should be complaining, it is Isabelle; the poor girl never gets to go anywhere, even though she is put through hell and back on her show. (After Mozzarella-gate, someone started a Send Isabelle Somewhere campaign on Twitter, complete with hashtags.)</p><p>For a little while, when the Italy idea was still fresh in his mind, he thought of asking her if she wanted to come with him.</p><p>Maybe next year, although who knows where they will be then.</p><p>Either way, he just turned thirty-one years old, which is not a milestone by any standards but is certainly old enough to make him feel like somewhere along the way he got left behind. All of his friends are in serious relationships, engaged or married or living together or procreating, and he’s just… living. It’s not like he doesn’t want what they all have; he just hasn’t found it yet. </p><p>He didn’t do much for his birthday, but that was by choice. All he wanted to do was eat good food and drink good wine with his friends, and that’s what he did. Lauren secured the fanciest private dining room at Beauty &amp; Essex, the one with the Chihuly glass and the dim lighting and the glass topped table. Alex knows that before he started dating Lauren, this was one of Isabelle’s favorite restaurants in the city; he had heard her wax rhapsodic many times about the custom two-story chandelier and the spiral staircase and the fact that the entrance to the restaurant was tucked away in the back of a crowded pawn shop so that it felt like you were entering another world when you walked through the brightly-lit fluorescent storefront and stepped into the low light of the restaurant. She has said a hundred times if she’s said it once that if she ever opened her own restaurant, she would want it to be exactly like this one.</p><p>He also knows that since he started dating Lauren, Isabelle hasn’t mentioned Beauty &amp; Essex once. Normally she goes at least a couple of times a month and tells Alex all about it the next day, but he can’t remember the last time that happened.</p><p>She did come for his birthday though, showed up with Jackie and Leven and Amandla, brought Alex a picture of the cutting board that she is having custom made for him at a workshop in Maine. She sits across the table from him at dinner between Mark and Dayo and they eat street corn ravioli and salted shishito peppers and drink a lot of wine, and it’s almost perfect.</p><p>It shouldn’t feel like there is something missing. </p><p>🍯💛</p><p>The next weekend he goes back to Los Angeles to meet with Fell; they want to do another collaboration, an entire knife set this time, and they invite him out to their gallery to look over some things and get a feel for what he wants to do. The timing works out nicely; Lauren has been talking about going out for a couple of days to visit Providence again and look for apartments. Alex has a feeling that it is going to be three days of her trying to convince him to move, and hopefully he will be able to dodge having to give her a concrete answer, but he is certainly willing to entertain the idea for seventy-two hours of sunshine, palm trees, and maybe some surfing if he can sneak away.</p><p>Isabelle comes over the night before he leaves to help him pack like she always does; he has never met anybody who can pack a suitcase as well as she does. She has tried to teach him how to do it a hundred times, but he just can’t. It’s not like she minds; she is the Queen of Organization. (You should see her pantry.) </p><p>She is sitting on his bed, rolling his shirts up as he hands them to her. It is late, and he has to leave his apartment at four in the morning to get to LaGuardia in time for his six o’clock flight, but he got caught at work late, so what can he do? He is spending the entire day tomorrow at the Fell gallery, and then he’ll have all of Saturday and most of Sunday to do whatever he wants, so he’ll catch up on sleep then if he absolutely has to.</p><p>“What if you don’t come back?” Isabelle asks, leaning over his suitcase and rearranging the clothes that she has already put inside, making more room.</p><p>“I’m going to come back, Iz,” he says, rolling his eyes at her as he hands her another shirt. “At the very least I’m going to have to get my laptop from work since I accidentally left it there.”</p><p>“Shut up!”</p><p>He laughs, abandoning the packing for now and sitting down against his pillows, patting the blanket next to him. Isabelle sighs, crawling up towards him and collapsing against his side. It is kind of late; that’s his bad. She shoves her face into his side, hiding a yawn. “Iz, you can go to bed.”</p><p>“No,” she says, her voice already bleary. “You need help.”</p><p>“We’re basically done,” he says. “I can probably handle packing my own underwear.”</p><p>“Are you sure?”</p><p>“No,” he says. Now he is the one trying to stifle a yawn. He glances over at the clock on his nightstand; it’s already midnight, but he cannot force himself to get up and keep packing. “What would I do without you?”</p><p>She doesn’t answer, and when he looks down at her, she’s already fast asleep. His last thought before he drifts off to sleep himself is that maybe he should go sleep in the guest room that Lauren spent a week cleaning out and decorating so that it’s actually suitable for guests and not just a dumping ground for all of Alex’s crap that he doesn’t want to deal with. He even went so far as to buy a second bed and haul it up to the apartment, but he is tired and it is midnight and he is comfortable, so he doesn’t. Instead he falls asleep with Isabelle curled up against him, the best sleep he’s had in a long time, at least until his alarm goes off three hours later.</p><p>Isabelle is already up; when he jerks awake he can see that his suitcase is zipped shut and standing by the door, and he can smell coffee coming from the kitchen. For not being a morning person, she sure is taking good care of him so early in the morning. </p><p>“Hey!” she says when he comes out of his room to take a shower, rubbing his eyes because apparently he forgot to take his contacts out before he passed out, judging by the stabbing pain. She is surprisingly chipper. “Good morning!”</p><p>“Okay.” He sits down at the counter, yawning so big his jaw cracks. “How many cups of coffee have you had?”</p><p>“None.”</p><p>“Plus?”</p><p>“Three. But that’s totally fair because it’s three o’clock in the morning.”</p><p>He yawns again. “Iz, you do what you gotta do. You’re the only reason I’m not going to miss my flight.”</p><p>She considers this. “You’re right. Maybe I shouldn’t have packed for you.”</p><p>In hindsight, maybe he should have put a shirt on before wandering out of his room. And he probably should have texted Lauren to tell her that Isabelle was sleeping over. Regardless, it was truly unfortunate timing that Lauren walked into his apartment as he was hugging Isabelle good-bye.</p><p>“Hey,” Alex tries to say casually as she bursts through the door with her suitcase, already talking about whether they’re going to be late for their flight and if he has ordered the Uber yet. Isabelle jumps away from Alex like shrapnel, which only serves to make the whole thing look a whole lot worse. “You’re… on time.”</p><p>To be fair, if the situations were reversed, Alex might be a little annoyed. But he certainly doesn’t think that he would make passive aggressive comments all the way to the airport and the entire time they are going through security. It takes a lot of effort to fight with your boyfriend while two TSA agents and an entire line of tired, cranky, stressed people who don’t want to take off their shoes or pull their laptops out of their bag listen to you, but she manages to get it done.</p><p>“Okay, Lau, enough,” he finally says once they make it to their gate and sit down. They have at least forty-five minutes to sit and wait before their boarding time, and he cannot spend those forty-five minutes arguing. “She was just helping me pack.”</p><p>“Are you telling me that you’re thirty-one and can’t pack for yourself?”</p><p>“Do you know me? That’s exactly what I’m saying.”</p><p>Finally, she lets it go, after Alex apologizes profusely and promises that it was an accident and it will never happen again. In the back of his mind, Alex wonders if Isabelle has had fights like this one with Nicky about him, but then they board the plane and he falls asleep and when he does wake up, they’re in Los Angeles and he forgets the whole thing entirely for a while.</p><p>They rent a car, and Alex drops Lauren off at the restaurant before going to the gallery all day. He goes to Church &amp; State for lunch to visit one of his friends from culinary school, and he is sitting in the courtyard when Isabelle calls him. “Hey,” she says, and she sounds weird. He looks at his watch; it is lunch time for her, which means she probably just got back up to her office and is pretending to check her email while actually doing the Times crossword for the day. “Can you talk?”</p><p>“Are you okay?” he asks. “You sound weird.”</p><p>“I’m fine, I just… I don’t know. This morning was kind of a mess.”</p><p>“That wasn’t your fault. I should have… I don’t know. I should’ve told her you were coming over.”</p><p>“It’s not like anything happened. We’re just friends.”</p><p>“I know that,” Alex snaps, and someone at the next table glances over their shoulder at him. “I know,” he repeats, lowering his voice. </p><p>“Okay, well, you don’t have to get crabby with me about it.”</p><p>“I’m not crabby. It’s just that I spent all morning hearing about it and frankly I’m really sick of talking about it.”</p><p>All he hears on the other end of the line is silence, and he knows immediately that he fucked up. The two of them may bicker sometimes, but they never ever fight; they have always talked about everything, putting everything on the table so nothing is ever bottled up until it explodes. Alex rubs his forehead, wincing as he does so at the headache that has been building up all morning. Is it always so goddamn hot in this city?</p><p>“Iz,” he says. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t… I am annoyed, but certainly not at you. I didn’t mean to take it out on you.”</p><p>“I know,” she says. “I’ll see you when you get back, okay?”</p><p>“Iz, wait!”</p><p>Well, that sucked, Alex thinks as he puts his phone down on the table. He doesn’t even have the time to fix it right now, he realizes as he glances at his watch. He has to get back to the studio and then he has to pick Lauren up from the restaurant so that they can go look at an apartment. The traffic in downtown Los Angeles is ridiculous, he is sweating through his shirt, and frankly, all he wants to do is go home, crawl into bed, and sleep for three days. </p><p>Instead, they go to look at an apartment that Lauren hates on sight, and Alex is having a hard time keeping it together. By the time they get to the Airbnb, he realizes that if he doesn’t go for a run, his head is going to explode.</p><p>He sleeps for a solid twelve hours that night, which is good because they spend entirely too much time the next day driving around and looking at more apartments. By the time he drops Lauren off at the restaurant for dinner service, he is more than ready to go sit on the beach and not talk to anyone for a few hours. He drives the forty minutes to Santa Monica, finding an empty spot on the sand and sitting down.</p><p>All day, he has been thinking about the week that Isabelle helped him apartment hunt. He had just been offered Wild Card (and the pay raise that came with it) and decided it was probably about time to find an apartment where he could run the air conditioner and the microwave at the same time. Isabelle hadn’t even been at the magazine for a year yet, but they were already spending all of their time together, and he figured if anyone was as invested in his next living situation as him, it was Isabelle. (The elevator in his building was constantly broken, and Isabelle told him that if she had to keep walking up the stairs she was going to end up burning the entire place to the ground.)</p><p>She was actually the one who found the place he is in now. They spent weeks looking for places, and while there were a lot he liked, there weren’t any that he could actually see himself living in. “I don’t want to move again,” he complained to her one night, scrolling through rental websites as she screamed at the television. (She always screams when she watches Chopped. “You have ten seconds, Tiff! That is not enough time to make a vinaigrette!”) “I’ve moved like twelve times since I graduated high school. I would love for the next place to be the last.”</p><p>“Last last?” she asked. “Or like… last for a while until you get married and have kids and move out to the suburbs and get a dog.”</p><p>“Like I’m ever going to move,” he said, shooting her a look. “You know there’s nothing in the world that could ever make me leave the city.”</p><p>They didn’t find anything that night since Isabelle managed to turn Chopped into a drinking game (one of her many talents), but the next week she came flying into his office, practically throwing her phone at his head. “I found it!” she said, gasping out a breath like she had just run a marathon.</p><p>“Iz, you ran down one flight of stairs.”</p><p>“Shut up and tell me what you think!”</p><p>She was right; it was perfect. It had everything he was looking for: two bedrooms, high ceilings, exposed brick, wood floors, open shelving in the kitchen. It seemed crazy expensive at the time, but he had been in a rent controlled apartment for almost five years and Isabelle told him that if he didn’t apply that day, he was going to lose it. She was right (she always was, not that Alex would ever say that to her), and two weeks later, he was moving in.</p><p>He remembers that day clearly; they each brought in one box (“It’s more of a symbolic gesture,” Isabelle told him, dropping it on the ground. “Just go with it.”) before ordering pizza, sitting on the ground and eating it off paper plates. Alex remembers looking around, thinking about how the place might look after he has lived there for five years.</p><p>And now it’s been almost five years, and he’s thinking about moving.</p><p>Except, he realizes, looking out at the sun setting over the ocean, he’s not. He’s not really thinking about moving, not seriously. When he thinks about it, even casually, he gets a pit in his stomach at the thought of leaving his home, his job, his friends. At the thought of leaving Isabelle. New York might not have the warm weather or the ocean or the surfing, but it has everything else that he needs. He would be crazy to move. </p><p>And so that night he finds himself breaking up with Lauren.</p><p>If he was being honest with himself (and with her), it’s been a long time coming, as long a time as it could be considering they have only been together for a few months. She turns it into something it’s not (Isabelle’s name is mentioned far more often than he would have liked), and if he had thought it completely through, maybe he would have waited until they got back to the city, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t spend one more night in that Airbnb listening to her talk about what their lives are going to look like when they move to California.</p><p>He goes to stay in a hotel that night, calls Isabelle but realizes that by the time he does, it’s three o’clock in the morning her time, and he doesn’t answer. He spends another hour getting an earlier flight back, and by nine o’clock that morning he is on a plane heading back to New York.</p><p>He almost forgets that he called Isabelle, telling her to meet him at his place at noon. To be fair, it was four in the morning when he left her that message, and he’d had a couple of drinks from the minibar. (Okay, fine, four.) He practically has a heart attack when he unlocks the door of his apartment to find that it is already unlocked and Isabelle is standing in his kitchen surrounded by flour. </p><p>“Oh my God,” he says, dropping his suitcase to the ground with a thump. “You scared the shit out of me!”</p><p>“Excuse me, you are the one who scared the shit out of me. Not that I hate the tipsy voicemails at three in the morning, but what happened? Why are you home?” She wipes her hands on a towel and comes over to him. “Also, I made honey cake because it just seemed like it was going to be that sort of day.”</p><p>He sits down on the couch, leaving room for Isabelle to drop down next to him. It smells like honey and sugar and vanilla, and before he got here Isabelle opened one of the windows so the apartment is nice and cool, a spring breeze filtering in and ruffling the pages of the magazines on his coffee table. She sits down next to him, and all the thoughts that had been running through his mind for the last twenty-four hours, his worries about whether she is mad at him, melt away as she throws her legs over his lap.</p><p>“So how was the City of Angels?” she asks. “Fun?”</p><p>“Ah, it was fine. Whatever. You know.”</p><p>“I don’t actually,” she says. “Because I was here all weekend while you were in California with your girlfriend.” There is a slight edge to her voice, a current running underneath her words that wasn’t there just a few moments before, and suddenly Alex doesn’t know what is going on.</p><p>“Listen, Iz, I wanted to talk to you about that.”</p><p>“You’re moving. Aren’t you.” She says this flatly, doesn’t ask it, just assumes, and something inside of Alex’s chest snaps.</p><p>“Isabelle,” he says, and she is going to know he is pissed because he never ever says her full name. “How many times do you have to ask me that before you believe me?”</p><p>Isabelle sits up, pulling her legs back and narrowing her eyes at him. “I don’t know, Alexander.” She puts extra emphasis on his name, and it feels weird to hear the whole thing coming out of her mouth; he can’t remember the last time she said it in a non-joking way. “Maybe I would believe you more if you hadn’t just gone to Los Angeles with your girlfriend to look at apartments.”</p><p>“I wasn’t looking at apartments! She was looking at apartments!”</p><p>“Yes, for the two of you.”</p><p>“Oh my God.” Alex stands up, rubbing his eyes. He is fucking exhausted, his contacts have fused to his corneas, he spent all weekend fighting, and all he wants to do is crawl in bed and sleep for a week. He had this vision in his head that he came up with on the plane of him coming back and telling Isabelle that he broke up with Lauren and everything going back to normal (or as normal as it can be), and that has gone entirely down the drain at this point.</p><p>Isabelle always says that they know each other so soul deep, and he agrees. He loves her more than anyone. But the downside of them knowing each other so well is she knows exactly what to say to upset him. “I don’t know how many times I can say this, Isabelle,” he says, as firmly as he can. “I’m not going anywhere.”</p><p>“You didn’t even tell me about it,” she says, getting up and following him around the coffee table, and he knows that’s her problem with this whole thing, that she had to hear about it from Lauren. </p><p>“I would have.”</p><p>“It doesn’t matter,” she says, her voice rising, and this is it; this is what makes him the most angry, when she acts like she doesn’t care or like she’s over the conversation when she clearly isn’t. Isabelle is confrontation-averse; he has been saying it for years. She would much prefer to sit on whatever she is feeling until it explodes and she is screaming at Alex in his living room. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore!”</p><p>“Well, that’s tough. We’re talking about it.”</p><p>“What’s the point? You’re leaving me.”</p><p>“I’m not!” he says, and he is yelling now, can’t help himself. “I can’t fucking leave you!”</p><p>The words hang in between them, and he knows that there is no going back now.</p><p>“That’s why you’re staying?” she says, standing so still it looks like she can’t move. “Because of me?”</p><p>“Of course, Isabelle,” he snaps. “Because of you and because of our job and because of this city. There’s no way in hell I could ever leave.”</p><p>“So you’re choosing me over your relationship?”</p><p>“I’m choosing you over everything.”</p><p>“Alex, I-”</p><p>“And then you had to go and get fucking engaged.”</p><p>And there it is, the feeling that he has kept close to his chest since it happened. He never told her how it made her feel, how he has been feeling since the day she came into his office and told me that she was getting married. Maybe he didn’t even really know himself; maybe he knew and couldn’t put the words to it. What he does know is that he doesn’t want Isabelle to get married.</p><p>He does not want Isabelle to get married. </p><p>“Alex-”</p><p>“You’re my best friend,” he says, looking down at her. “I’m… I don’t, I can’t lose you. I don’t want to lose you.”</p><p>“You’re not going to!”</p><p>“Yes I am. You’re going to get married and you’re going to be the one moving to that big house in the suburbs with the kids and the dogs and the pool and the white picket fence. You’re going to be so happy and you’re going to forget about me. You’re going to forget about me entirely, and I don’t… I don’t know how to deal with that. I can’t.”</p><p>“You can’t? You can’t deal with it?” By the way she is raising her voice again, he knows that it is not a question that he should try to answer. She gets in his face, so close he can see every freckle splashed across her nose, pushing him a step backwards with the force of her words. “What is there for you to deal with, Alexander? You’re still my best friend. I still see you every day. I still tell you everything. If it wasn’t for your fucking girlfriend, I would still sleep over at your house and make you breakfast in the morning without it being weird. Nothing has changed!”</p><p>He knows that is the time to tell her about Lauren. Now is the time to tell her that as long as she has a boyfriend or a fiancé, there is always going to be something between them. There is always going to be something deep in his chest that he can’t put a name to.</p><p>So instead of talking, instead of telling her what he lies awake at night and thinks about, he kisses her.</p><p>It is the kind of kiss that has been in the making for five years, the kind that has been in the back of Alex’s mind with every conversation, every time Isabelle comes into his office to complain about Bitch Kitchen, every time she asks him to taste test something, every time she falls asleep in his bed with her head pillowed on his arm.</p><p>At first, Isabelle seems as surprised as Alex does, but she doesn’t pull away, stepping closer and sliding her arms up around his neck, pulling him down towards her. She tastes like honey and vanilla and sugar and all the good things in the world, like everything that he might have thought she tasted like if he had ever thought about it before. </p><p>(He has. He would be a liar if he said it had never crossed his mind.)</p><p>She kisses him back and he feels in that moment like the world is standing still. He forgets that she is engaged. He forgets that he just broke up with his girlfriend. He forgets that he has spent every single day of the last five years stopping himself from kissing this girl. He forgets about California and apartment hunting and everything that has snuck its way in between them because he is kissing Isabelle Fuhrman and she is kissing him back.</p><p>He holds onto her tightly, like she might disappear if he stops touching her, and he could do this every single second for the rest of his life and never get tired of it. He angles her towards the couch, and she lets him pull her down, but a second later she springs up.</p><p>“Alex, what are we doing?”</p><p>He can barely form one word, much less a sentence. “I… I don’t… I was just…”</p><p>“I gotta go.” And Isabelle is out the door before he can say anything, before he can tell her to stop or to wait or to just let him explain. She leaves him sitting there in the wake of what he has done, wondering if he has truly ruined the best thing he has ever had in his life.</p><p>🍯💛</p><p><b>Nakatomi Plaza </b>Nothing is more Alex than Alex slicing garlic with an AXE</p><p><b>JR </b>Isabelle might be dead last but still the winner of our hearts</p><p><b>Jules </b>I like to imagine that someone in the test kitchen needed these ingredients prepped and this was their way of tricking the others into doing it</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. i've been waiting so long for you to come my way</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>i'm back! the last couple of months have been filled with law school graduation and taking the bar and job hunting, but for the time being, i have a break and can actually write again. if you have been waiting for this, thank you for your kind messages and comments! i'm so so happy to be back in this world and i hope you are too. 💛</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>i've been waiting so long for you to come my way<br/>and now i can't wait another day<br/>when you hold me, i finally see<br/>when you say love, i know what it means<br/>/ meaning of life by kelly clarkson</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>Alex Goes Camping | Wild Card</b>
</p><p>
  <span>What an absolute idiot he is. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex has been playing those moments right before he kissed Isabelle in his mind, over and over and over, even though he is currently sitting in the woods with only Jack, his camping gear, and a roaring campfire for comfort. The whole Alex Goes Camping thing seemed like a good idea for a video when he came up with a month ago, but then he had to drive two hours out into the middle of nowhere and act like he is happy in front of the camera, even though he’s not.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His best friend hasn’t spoken to him in a week. An entire week. It is the longest they have ever gone without speaking. He finds himself reaching for his phone every sixty seconds like she is going to suddenly call him or text him, even though she has given him no indication that she ever wants to speak to him again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And honestly, he wouldn’t blame her if she didn’t. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Dude,” Jack says. They are sitting around the campfire, and it is starting to get dark. Alex has already built a fire and made tons of food, fish and steaks and ribs, grilling it all over the fire as Jack films. It is way too much food for the two of them, and he spent twenty minutes packing the leftovers into the Yeti so he can bring it back home and it doesn’t go to waste. He certainly doesn’t feel like eating it. “What’s wrong?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nothing,” Alex says automatically. “Nothing’s wrong.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He knows that he hasn’t been hiding it well. He has been quiet and cranky all day; Jack only had to reel him back in from a couple of tangents instead of his usual twelve. It’s no wonder Jack knows that there is something on his mind.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alex.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But he can’t stop thinking about it, not even when he tries. He has run through it in his mind basically every other minute since it happened last week, and he can’t figure out what the hell he was thinking. She is engaged, for fuck’s sake. For a little while she thought she was going to have a baby, and she didn’t even seem all that freaked out about the prospect. And here comes Alex, kissing her like she is his to kiss, like he can just do whatever he wants with no consequences or implications.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Honestly. What is his problem?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He doesn’t know. He really doesn’t know. All he knows is that one second she is standing in front of him, yelling at him, and the next second he is kissing her. He can’t help himself. He doesn’t even realize until it is happening that this is what he has been waiting for his entire life, this is what he has felt like he is missing. This right here is it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Except it isn’t because she’s engaged. She’s getting married. She promised to spend the rest of her life with someone. And that someone certainly isn’t Alex.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He did try to follow Isabelle after she fled her apartment. She ran and he was left sitting there, frozen for a moment or two, but then he jumped up, chased after her. She was already gone; Alex was pretty sure that the elevator had never come faster, and he hated it for that. He called her a few times, but she didn’t answer or respond to his texts, and he gets the idea pretty quickly. She doesn’t want to talk to him or hear from him or see him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She didn’t come in to work at all last week, called in sick, which she hardly ever does, even when she is actually sick. On Monday when she doesn’t show up, Alex goes over to her apartment, but she isn’t there and he sure as hell isn’t going to go over to Nicky’s place to find her. He tries again on Tuesday, but she still isn’t home, and then he gives up. At least for now. On Thursday, Jackie comes storming into his office while he is making a list of what he needs to pack for the camping trip, demanding that he tell her what he knows.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What are you talking about, Jackie?” he asks. He knows that his voice is tired, and he’s sure that he doesn’t look any better than he is feeling. But if he tells anyone what happened, what he did, well… saying it out loud doesn’t seem like a possibility at this point.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Where is she? She’s never out for this long. She’s not answering my texts or my phone calls. You saw her last, right? She went over to your place on Sunday?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, but that was the last time I talked to her.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, how was she? Did she seem weird?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He puts his pen down, looking up at her exasperatedly. “She was fine, Jackie. I don’t know.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well…” Jackie looks a little suspicious, but if Isabelle isn’t talking to him, she certainly isn’t talking to anyone else either. There’s no way Jackie knows anything. “If you hear anything, you’ll let me know?” She frames it as a question, but it certainly isn’t.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Will you track me down and kill me if I don’t?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jackie storms out of his office, leaving him behind to wonder if he has ruined not only his friendship with Isabelle, but also all of his other friendships too. (No one will take his side once they hear what he’s done. Hell, he wouldn’t even take his own side.) So he tries to put it out of his mind. He doesn’t have time for it anyways. He has videos to film, which is why he is out here in the woods with a tent that took him forty minutes to figure out. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The only good part about the whole camping thing is that he doesn’t get cell service out here, which would normally be annoying but is actually coming in handy since now he doesn’t have to worry about whether Isabelle is ever going to text him. (Or Lauren, for that matter. He has been avoiding her texts ever since he got back from Los Angeles, which is proving to be a chore in and of itself. She has been asking incessantly whether she can come over and get some of her stuff that she left at his apartment, which is a fair request, but he knows it is going to turn into an argument or a marathon therapy session, and he just can’t handle that. He ended up texting her at four o’clock that morning, telling her that he was going to be gone all weekend but she could stop by, grab what she needs, and leave his spare key under the mat. Hopefully that is the end of that, in all respects.) </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He decides he doesn’t want to think about any of it anymore, and he certainly isn’t going to talk about it. He has managed to keep Jack off his back for the majority of the day. They leave early in the morning, the sky still dim, Jack falling asleep in the passenger seat as they drive out of the city. It takes Alex an ungodly amount of time to set up the tent, but he gets it done. He makes a cooking fire, chops wood and sets up a grate and hauls all of the food out of the car so he can get it cooked once the fire is ready. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He keeps himself busy because if he doesn’t, he has no idea where his mind might go.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But now it’s getting dark and he doesn’t have anything else to film until breakfast tomorrow and the stars are so bright and big that he can count them all individually and he feels lonelier than he has in a long time, even when he was sitting on that beach in Los Angeles thinking about his failure of a relationship, even the night he tossed and turned after Isabelle ran out of his apartment. And now, instead of staying awake and staring at the ceiling of his bedroom, he can lie awake and stare at the ceiling of a shitty tent that he only half-ass put together. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There are bugs and a stick is slowly working its way into his spinal cord and putting his pillow on top of his head is not enough to block out the hoots of owls and it’s cold, even for the middle of June. God. This sucks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He thinks that maybe things will be a little brighter in the morning, but he practically cuts off half his finger when he is chopping wood for the fire. A little duct tape and a lot of blood later, it’s fine, but now he’s even crankier than he was when he went to bed. He makes breakfast, acting like he’s fine, just fine, for the camera, counting down the minutes until he can go home and take a shower. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He is definitely calling in sick on Monday. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>🍯💛</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It has been one hell of a week.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex kissed her. It seems even more unreal when she says it in her head, but he did. He kissed her, and it didn’t feel like something that he just did on a whim. It feels like something that he has been thinking about for a long time, something he has clearly been contemplating. She can feel it in the way he touches her, like she is going to disappear if he moves too quickly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then Isabelle takes off, for reasons she still can’t explain, even to herself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When she is standing there in Alex’s apartment, listening to him talk about her relationship and what the rest of her life is going to look like, she is so mad she can barely breathe. She had been so sure that he was going to walk in and tell her that he was moving to California, that he is leaving her for good. And instead, he starts talking about Nicky and her engagement and this hypothetical house in the suburbs, and then before she even has a chance to argue, to tell him that he is wrong, he kisses her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Isabelle knows in that moment that Nicky is a stranger to her because in all the times that they have kissed, it has never felt like this. It has never felt like what kissing Alex feels like.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kissing Alex makes her feel like she is not, in fact, trapped in her own life, the way she has been feeling since the second Nicky got down on one knee, if not before.Kissing Alex makes her feel like there is more out there for her. Kissing Alex makes her feel like she is cherished.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And it is like she loses her head completely. She forgets that she is engaged. She forgets that Alex has a girlfriend. She forgets that he is her best friend and that this friendship means more to her than anything. But then she remembers, all of it coming at her at once to hit her like a truck.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So Isabelle does what it is that she does best: she leaves.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She practically sprints out of his apartment, down to the street to catch the train back to her side of the river. As soon as that door slams behind her, she regrets it, but there is no turning back now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She doesn’t go to Nicky’s apartment, even though she told him this morning that she might stop over later. (That was before everything changed. She certainly isn’t the same person she was this morning.) Instead, she goes back to her place, locking the door behind her and sitting in the dark for an hour, her head in her hands, thinking of how she got here.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She doesn’t know. She couldn’t tell you. She hasn’t got a clue.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>What she does know is that there is no way she can go to work tomorrow, so she doesn’t. For the first time in five years, she calls in sick when she is not actually sick, and she does it again the next day and the next and the next, until suddenly it is Friday and she hasn’t gone to work all week. She knows she’s being a coward, and she can’t help it. But she cannot face anyone until she figures out what happened and what she’s going to do about it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Isabelle also knows without question or equivocation that she is in love with Alex. She knew it from the moment his lips touched hers, and if she is being honest with herself (which she figures it is high time for), she has known deep down for a very long time. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Now she just needs to figure out what the hell she is going to do about all of it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After spending five days in her apartment not speaking to anyone, only going out to get groceries or sit on her balcony when she needs a little fresh air, she decides that it is time to buck up, go over to Alex’s apartment, and tell him how she feels. Maybe then she will know what to do. Maybe then she will have the courage to move forward, no matter what moving forward actually looks like.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If Isabelle is being honest with herself, she would have to say that she is terrified.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Even so, she swallows her fear, taking the train over to Brooklyn bright and early on Saturday morning. (Alright, it’s more like nine o’clock, but that’s plenty early for both her and Alex on a weekend morning.) She stops outside his door; normally, she just barges in. He never locks the damn thing and it has always felt like her apartment too, but things seem different now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Things are different now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So Isabelle takes a few deep breaths, counting to three before knocking tentatively on the door. It swings open almost immediately, and she opens her mouth to apologize. She has a whole speech planned out, so she doesn’t end up just blurting out that she loves him, but it gets caught in her throat when she realizes it is Lauren looking back at her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe she should have thought this through.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hi,” Isabelle manages to croak out. “Is, uh…” She doesn’t know what to do next. It’s not like she can have this conversation with Alex if Lauren is sitting in the next room. “Is Alex here?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” Lauren says shortly, and it looks like she has been crying. “He’s away for the weekend.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He’s… what?” Normally, Isabelle knows where Alex is every second of the day. She guesses that’s what she gets for not talking to him all week. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah,” Lauren says. She has a sweater in her hand, tosses it on the chair next to the door. “He’s camping with Jack.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Godammit. Isabelle did know he was going to go do that for Wild Card; she just forgot entirely that it was scheduled for this weekend.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay.” She doesn’t know what to say, tries not to look at the sunlit patch of floor where she stood just a few days ago with Alex touching her so softly it was like she was made of spun sugar, like he was afraid she was going to disappear altogether. “Could you just tell him…” Something inside her makes her cut off her sentence before she can finish it, although it’s not sure whether it’s the look on Lauren’s face, the amount of Lauren’s things she can see spread out across the apartment, or the feeling deep in her stomach that tells her this whole thing was a bad idea. “Never mind. I gotta go.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She doesn’t cry until she’s back in her apartment, all of the fairy lights switched off and the darkness heavy around her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>🍯💛</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When Alex gets back to his apartment on Sunday afternoon, he can tell immediately that Lauren is gone. Half of his closet is empty, the counter in his bathroom is clean again, and the floral smell that usually follows her everywhere is noticeably absent. He opens all the windows right away, trying to get the air moving, but it still feels like something is missing, and he knows that that something is not Lauren. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He makes honey cake, even though he is not a baker and nothing that he could make would turn out as good as Isabelle’s, but it makes him feel like she is there nonetheless with the smell of honey and vanilla filling the apartment. It surrounds him as he sits down at his desk beneath the giant industrial window, sunlight pouring in, to finish writing the introduction for her book.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He doesn’t even know if she wants it anymore, if she has asked Jackie or Leven or Amandla to do it instead. But he hasn’t heard otherwise, and her deadline is fast approaching.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So with the taste of honey in his mouth and in his head, he writes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex would be the first to say that he is not much of a writer. There is a reason that he has never considered working on his own book; he is much more comfortable standing at the stove with a spoon or a whisk in his hand than he is in front of his computer, trying to put words to feelings that he has never been able to adequately describe. But for Isabelle, he would do anything, which is why he sits at his computer for three hours and produces absolutely nothing of substance.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He needs a walk.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He ends up on the Brooklyn Bridge, looking at the lights of Lower Manhattan as the sun starts to set. He can see One World Trade, thinks that if he squints really hard he might even be able to see his office, although he knows that that’s not really true. But it could be, and it brings to mind all of the times that he has sat there with Isabelle as the sun goes down, talking about food and relationships and life and all of the good things that the world has to offer them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Without question, she is his best friend. But it doesn’t hit him until that moment, five years after they met, that she is also, without question, so much more than that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He made it twenty-five years before he met Isabelle, but he can’t imagine how. He remembers the day he met her like it was yesterday, popping up over the cubicle wall that separated their desks and scaring the crap out of her. She was good-natured and sweet and reminded him of honey even then. She has been there for all of the big moments in his life: when he managed to muddle through his first Wild Card video without having a panic attack in front of the camera (Alex Makes Kombucha; he managed to spill all over the floor and make a giant mess of both the kitchen and himself); when he moved to this apartment that he swore up and down would be his last; when his videos started hitting one million, then five million, and then ten million views; when he was written up in the Times.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And Isabelle was right there next to him for all of it: laughing in the corner as he sheepishly mopped up kombucha; unpacking his kitchen equipment and taking extra time to put it away just the way he liked it; tweeting his videos when they went live; and, of course, even there in the Times article, her name in black and white right next to his. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And Alex will be there for her, no matter what her big moments happen to be, whether she’s getting promoted or engaged or married or pregnant, the same way she’s been there for him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It is clear as day, all of a sudden, as he stands there looking at the map of what their lives have looked like so far. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He is in love with her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It seems absolutely ridiculous that he didn’t know that before this moment. It is evident in the way he feels when she’s not around, like something is missing. It is evident in the brightness he feels when she is. It is evident in how uncomfortable he feels when Nicky is around and the feeling that he had deep in the back of his brain when he was with Lauren that he could never put a name to. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex rolls the thought around in his mind as the sky gets dark and he walks back to his apartment. He tells her everything and it would feel weird not to, but of course he has to keep this to himself. He might be single, but she certainly is not. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>So instead of calling her and telling her that he can’t live without her, he sits down at his desk, opens his computer and writes about love: not how much he loves her, but how much Isabelle loves food, how she treats it with care and how that care permeates through her work, her life, everything she does. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He reads it one more time around three o’clock in the morning, knowing that he has to get up for work in just a few hours, and without overthinking it, he attaches the document to an email and hits send, finally falling into bed. He falls asleep as soon as his head hits the pillow, Isabelle the last thing on his mind before he lets go.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>🍯💛</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It is no surprise to Isabelle when Jackie shows up at her door at lunchtime on Monday. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She shouldn’t have called in sick again; she knows that. She wakes up early, showers and makes breakfast and straightens her hair, but as she is getting ready to walk out the door, she freezes. She can’t get the image of Lauren in Alex’s apartment out of her mind, and she isn’t sure she’s ready to face Alex yet, not until she can figure out what to say to him, until she can figure out how to tell him that she loves him. The thought crosses her mind that maybe she shouldn’t; he certainly doesn’t feel the same way, and even if he did, he is in no position to voice that to her. But she isn’t so good at keeping her thoughts inside, especially not with Alex.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She knows that if she sees him, she will end up blurting it out and ruining their friendship. So she can’t see him. Not yet. Not until she figures her own life out first.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She emails Dayo and gets right back into bed, resigning herself to another day of crappy reality television and even crappier takeout. She should have known that Jacqueline Emerson was not going to let that fly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Isabelle!” She could hear Jackie yelling at her front door from her bedroom, so most certainly the rest of her floor probably could too. “Let me in!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Isabelle took her time getting out of bed, pulling on sweatpants and trudging to the door to let her in. Jackie barges past her as soon as she pulls it open, bringing in warm June air and the smell of summer. “Isabelle Grace,” she says, whirling around and glaring at her in a way that only Jackie can. “Where the hell have you been?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m sick,” Isabelle says, giving a pathetic little sniff for good measure. “How did you get into the building?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, I bribed a delivery guy. That’s beside the point.” Jackie sits down on the couch, looking pointedly at Isabelle until she sits down next to her. “What’s going on with you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“There’s nothing going on.” Isabelle sighs heavily. She knows there is no point in trying to hide anything from Jackie; the woman was a private investigator in another life. “I’m just… I don’t know. Kind of down.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why?” She sighs again. “C’mon, Isabelle,” Jackie says. “You can tell me. Whatever it is.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So Isabelle does, makes Jackie tea and then spills the whole story from her feelings about her engagement to her pregnancy scare to the moment Alex kissed her, which is when Jackie shrieks and spills her tea all over Isabelle’s couch. Isabelle ends the entire thing by telling her that she is in love with Alex and needs to end things with Nicky, one way or the other, no matter what her future with Alex might look like.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’ve gotta tell him,” Jackie says, mopping up tea with a soggy tissue.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You think?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He’s miserable. He barely came out of his office last week, and today he looks like he got hit by a truck.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Isabelle leans back, closing her eyes. She doesn’t want him to be miserable, of course. But she can’t face him, not until she talks to Nicky first. And knowing what she has to do doesn’t make any of it any easier. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jackie stays for a while, straightening up Isabelle’s apartment and forcing her to cook because she knows it will make her feel better. She makes her promise that she will be at the office tomorrow, no matter what, promising her in return that everything is going to be fine. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then Jackie leaves and Isabelle sits down at her computer to check her email, and she sees one from Alex that came in late last night (or early this morning, very early, depending on how you look at it) that she must have missed in her Monday morning distress. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s a Word document attached to an email that just says: “For you, if you still want it. -A,” and she knows what it is immediately, even though there is no name. (Alex never names his documents, something that makes Isabelle crazy, especially when she is trying to clean up the desktop on his work laptop.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She starts crying from the moment she reads the first word and she doesn’t stop for twenty minutes after she’s done. She doesn’t know if it’s the thought of what happened between them or the realization of how she actually feels or the weight of the words themselves, but the phrase soul deep has never meant so much or made so much sense. No one knows her like Alex does; that much she knows for sure.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Later, when she thinks back on this day, she will not remember leaving her apartment or hailing or a taxi or standing on the street in front of Nicky’s building. But somehow she finds herself there, ringing the buzzer like she has a million times and waiting for him to let her up like she has a million times, even thinking in the back of her mind that she is surprised that he is there and not at work, although she can guess by the tone of her voice in her phone call that he knew well enough to meet her right away. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey,” he says when he opens the door. He is still half in his suit, his jacket and tie discarded over the back of a nearby chair and his top two buttons undone. The first thing he does when he gets home every day (or night, more often) is take his tie off, and he leaves them all over his apartment, like little silk surprises for Isabelle to find. “What’s wrong?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Isabelle takes a deep breath. “Can we talk?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She muddles through it as best as she can, telling Nicky that she loves him, she will always love him, but she’s not in love with him. In ten minutes, she ends a relationship that went on for a year and a half, putting the ring into his hand before looking at him one last time and leaving. And when she walks out onto the street, the air warm and the sounds of the city floating around her, she finally feels free. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>🍯💛</span>
</p><p>
  <b>Blue James </b>
  <span>I could watch this man do anything</span>
</p><p>
  <b>Brittany Faze </b>
  <span>At least he saved his beer when he fell off the stump. Always gotta save the beer.</span>
</p><p>
  <b>DavePun </b>
  <span>I love that he says that he has never cooked langoustine in the woods, implying that he has cooked literally everything else in the woods</span>
</p><p>
  <b>Katrina </b>
  <span>“Heard some guy cut off his thumb doing this, not to jinx myself” cut to Alex contemplating his bandaged hand</span>
</p><p>
  <b>Jackie Emerson </b>
  <span>“Hey Jack! Sleeping beauty! Morning babe!” How come you never greet me like this when I walk into the kitchen every morning?</span>
</p><p>
  <b>SB </b>
  <span>I love how they cut it out when Jack talks so it seems like Alex is going crazy </span>
</p><p>
  <span>🍯💛</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Isabelle Fuhrman - Unnamed Cookbook</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Introduction by Alexander Ludwig</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>I was so glad when Isabelle asked me to write the introduction for her book because if she didn’t, I was probably just going to do it anyways. But when I actually sat down to start writing, I realized that I couldn’t, not because I didn’t know what to say but because there are so many things that I could say about Isabelle. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>We met in 2015 on the day that she started at the magazine, and from the moment that I stuck my head into her office and scared the daylights out of her, I knew that she would be my friend for the long haul. She is loyal and kind and endlessly honest (sometimes too honest, a sentiment that I have often voiced when a Wild Card episode is failing miserably and Isabelle is around to see it). Over the years, she has been my sounding board, my constant encourager, and my best friend who has more love to give than anyone else I have ever known. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Above all, Isabelle is a fantastic chef. When I think about her, I think about two things: love and food, and those two things intersect. She loves food, loves to talk about it and make it and, above all, eat it. And the love and care and respect that she has for food and for the industry and for her work shines through in everything that she does. She truly, excuse my language, gives a shit. (Sorry, Mom.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When Isabelle told me that she was going to write a cookbook, I knew without even asking that it would be about baking and dessert and sweets. Our friend Jackie says all the time that dessert is in Isabelle’s DNA. Every time we go out to eat, she orders every dessert on the menu. She makes croquembouche for fun. Whipped cream is her favorite food. And it only makes sense that she is putting all of the knowledge and passion and love that she has into something that she can share with the rest of the world and not just those of us who are lucky to know her personally.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This book has been a labor of love; I cannot count the amount of texts and phone calls and FaceTimes that I have gotten at midnight because Isabelle needs a second opinion or a little encouragement or just someone to tell her to push through. She loves food so much that she wants everyone else to love it too. She wants you to be confident in your cooking, to learn new things, to work with ingredients you might not have used before, and to, at the end of the day, create something.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I have been so lucky to get to know Isabelle over the last six years, and I feel so lucky to be even the tiniest part of something that she cares about so much. She has so much goodness inside her that begs to be shared with the world, so I hope that as you read and use and love this book, you fall in love with food just as much as Isabelle has.</span>
</p>
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